Senator-elect Scott Colom (D-MS) speaks during a victory rally November 11, 2026 in Tougaloo, Mississippi.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Brandon Bell/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Democratic victories in the South this year were determined as much by those who showed up to vote as those who stayed home, according to an NPR analysis of turnout data.
Midterm elections normally see lower voter turnout than presidential elections. But from Louisiana to the Carolinas, counties that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 came close to — and in some cases exceeded — the presidential election turnout. At the same time, counties won by President Trump saw a much steeper decline in turnout and fewer Republican votes.
In six southern states – Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina – turnout fell 19% in counties won by Harris, compared to 26% in counties won by Trump. (In Louisiana, counties are called parishes).
In the South, the six states analyzed leaned an average of 22 points toward Democrats, which is higher than the national gap of about 14.5 points.
This differential turnout was a key factor in Democrats’ decision to flip Senate seats in North Carolina, South Carolina and Mississippi, and contributed to a narrower-than-expected margin in the Louisiana Senate race.
In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom outperformed Harris, winning about 8,100 more votes than in 2024. Colom’s margin over incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is just over 5,600 votes as the final ballots are being counted.
Democratic Senate candidates in these six states received more raw votes than Harris in 170 counties. On the other hand, Republican candidates received hundreds of thousands fewer votes than Trump.
Black voters showed up
In special elections and primaries leading up to the midterm elections, voting data and polls showed a surge in turnout among black voters, spurred in part by a Supreme Court ruling that gutted part of the Voting Rights Act.
The Louisiana v. Callais led to changing congressional maps throughout the South, including Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and North Carolina. After redrawing the boundaries to elect a delegation with an 11-3 Republican majority, North Carolina Democrats are now on track to hold an 11-3 majority.
Overall, majority-black counties had higher voter turnout, about 85 percent, compared to 76 percent for majority-white, non-Hispanic counties. Sixteen majority-black counties received more Democratic votes than in the 2024 elections, including 12 in Mississippi. Clay County, Mississippi, saw the largest increase in voter turnout – by 17 points between 2024 and 2026.
Beyond the majority black turnout, Democratic candidates in these southern states benefited from a smaller decline in turnout compared to the 2024 elections.
In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff finished with about 79,000 fewer votes than former Vice President Kamala Harris did two years earlier, although he was more than a million votes short in total.
All 159 counties in Georgia swung Democratic. Ossoff toppled a dozen, including suburban Fayette County, en route to a 14-point victory.
South Carolina saw some of the highest Democratic turnout, with Greenville, Spartanburg and Lexington counties seeing the largest increases in raw Democratic votes compared to the 2024 election. Greenville, which supported Trump by 20 points two years ago, flipped to support Sen.-elect Annie Andrews by about two points.
Republican voters didn’t
Nowhere was the Republican fall more brutal than in North Carolina, where former Gov. Roy Cooper flipped the Senate race by a 20-point margin. Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley received 1.25 million fewer votes than Trump when he won the state in 2024, a drop of about 43% in Republican Party support.
No county or parish in these southern states managed to match Trump’s 2024 vote total. The smallest decline was in Greene County, Georgia, at 83%, the only one of 518 counties where Republicans received more than 80% of Trump’s raw 2024 vote.
The biggest drop was in North Carolina, which saw only two-thirds of the 2024 Republican vote. Wake and Mecklenburg counties, home to the two largest cities – Raleigh and Charlotte – saw the biggest drops, with about 100,000 and 90,000 fewer Republican voters, respectively.
Atlanta and its suburbs also saw a notable decline in Republican support, with Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb and Cherokee counties each losing between 35,000 and 77,000 Republican votes. Democrats had smaller losses in these areas, with slight vote gains for Gwinnett and Cherokee counties.
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