Republicans made gains in South Carolina’s segment of the Black Belt in 2022. With the State Senate now up for election, will they continue to gain ground?
Each party is on defense in South Carolina this year. In 2022, Republicans gained ground in the “Black Belt” across the United States in state legislatures – from Arkansas to North Carolina, Republicans flipped several Democratic-held seats in the lower chambers in these states in counties with a high African-American population. They were expected to break ground in these areas that year, but exceeded expectations, particularly in the Carolinas.
This year, the State Senate is up for the first time since 2020 with new lines that largely resemble the map drawn from the 2010s. The State House map was redrawn after the 2022 midterm elections with minor changes, particularly around Columbia. As a result of their implementation this year, Democrats will flip a State House seat in the area.
Republicans have a few opportunities to expand their supermajority in the State House this year, but with black turnout in a presidential year almost certainly to be higher than in the 2022 midterms, they’re mostly on defense as they try and hold onto the gains they made in the Black Belt. In the State Senate, however, Democrats are trying to prevent Republicans from creating a supermajority in the chamber as they work to defend their seats in the region. In 2020, Republicans flipped rural, conservative white-majority districts represented by moderate-to-conservative-leaning Democratic incumbents. Now, most of their focus is on rural districts with a declining African-American population, represented by black incumbents.
This analysis will focus on the most competitive races in the South Carolina legislature this year: every district here is in our “Tilt” column – it’d be a remarkable upset if any seat in our “Lean” columns in our forecast across either chamber went in the opposite direction, due to the polarized electorate of South Carolina, especially in presidential years. Most of these seats are in the Black Belt but there are a few in Lowcountry.
We’ll start in the State House, where the stakes are lower. Republicans are heavily favored to keep their supermajority here: they have about an 8-in-10 chance of keeping it. If Democrats sweep every seat in our “Tilt” column here though, they will break the supermajority that Republicans created in 2022.
The narrowest Republican victory in the State House in 2022 was in Lowcountry’s Biden +7 HD-116. This is a district that’s been inching leftward over the years, but Republican Matt Leber ousted freshman incumbent Chardale Murray (D) in 2022 by 3-and-a-half points. Murray’s brother, Charlie Murray, is now running for the seat and Leber is running for a State Senate race that he will likely win. Leber recruited Republican James Teeple to keep this seat red, and Chardale Murray is now the Mayor of Holywood, South Carolina. Teeple accused the Representative-turned-Mayor of using the Holywood government Facebook page to attack him and has broken South Carolina ethics laws. Teeple caught his negative press in the last stretch of the campaign after it was revealed he threatened a child’s parent in 2022.
Teeple has kept a spending advantage over Charlie Murray during the campaign, but with a gap not as wide as Leber had over Chardale Murray in 2022. The district was 28% African-American in 2020 and a drop in black and Democratic turnout as well as a wide Republican spending advantage likely put Leber over the top in 2022. With black and Democratic turnout expected to be higher this year and a lesser spending gap, we have this as a Tilt Democratic flip.
The other highly competitive seat in the Lowcountry technically cannot be driven through and is contiguous by water. Biden +2 HD-110 contains the southern tip of Charleston City, parts of Mount Pleasant to the east, and Harbor View to the west. Freshman incumbent Tom Hartnett (R) is running for a second term against Democratic consultant John Moffett. This is an urban/suburban, wealthy district with a high college-educated population that’s trending leftward. Moffett’s been running a strong, well-financed campaign and Harnett and state Republicans are worried that this seat will end up flipping despite Harnett’s 8-point victory in 2022, mostly due to his vote for the “heartbeat bill,” South Carolina’s post-Dobbs bill that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. This is a very, very tough seat to predict and if there’s any seat I think is likeliest to go against our forecast, it’s this one; expect a close race regardless. This is a Tilt Democratic pickup.
Staying in the southern part of the state, the competitive district in the State House this year that had the largest Republican swing from 2016 to 2020 is Biden +7 HD-122, which contains Hampton County, most of Jasper County, and parts of Colleton County. Republican Bill Hager beat three-term incumbent Hook Williams (D) by 8 points in 2022 in a district that was 44% African-American in 2020. Democrat Audrey Hopkins Williams has been running an underdog campaign against Hager, and given the trends in this district it should be seen as a slight upset if Hager lost; a lack of ticket-splitting though, as is usually the case in South Carolina’s racially polarized seats, may result in a Democratic victory if Harris doesn’t decline in this district as badly as expected. This is a Tilt Republican hold.
The largest victory for a Republican in a Black Belt seat in 2022’s South Carolina State House elections was in Biden +5 HD-64, which contains Clarendon County as well as parts of Sumter County. This district is adjacent to Speaker Murrell Smith’s, who has made this seat a priority for Republicans to hold. It shouldn’t be hard when you scratch the surface: in 2022, Republican Fawn Pedalino beat freshman incumbent Kimberly Johnson (D) by 10 points, and the district swung rightward in 2020 and trended rightward in 2022. The district was 47% African-American in 2020 though, so a tight race is expected. This is a Tilt Republican hold.
The narrowest 2022 Republican victory in flipping a Black Belt district in South Carolina’s State House elections, on the other hand, was Biden +7 HD-12, containing McCormick County and the most African-American parts of Greenwood County. This district was 45% black in 2020, and in 2022, Republican Dan Gibson beat 24-year-incumbent Anne Parks (D), who outran Biden’s performance in her 2020 district by 9 points during her 2020 re-election. Political newcomer Jumelle Brooks (D) has been working to flip this seat back. This race has been in our Toss-Up category throughout the year, and it’s definitely been a difficult one to pick a winner for: on the one hand, Gibson ousted a longtime incumbent in a district bleeding African-American population. On the other hand, this district barely moved from 2016 to 2020 in its presidential results, barely becoming more Republican. It’s a tough pick, but we’ve got this as a Tilt Republican hold.
Republicans have two good opportunities this year to flip Black Belt seats in the South Carolina House. In 2022, they came up short in Biden +11 HD-54, which contains most of Marlboro County as well as parts of Dillon, Darlington, and Chesterfield counties. This district was redrawn for 2024 and has become slightly more Republican-leaning – in 2022, the old 54th district went to Biden by 13 points and was almost 2% more African-American. Five-term incumbent Pat Henegan (D), who is white, won re-election by 5 points that year but decided to not run for re-election in 2024, making this an open race.
Two white men will be facing off against one another in this majority-African-American district. Democrat Jason Scott Luck and Republican Sterling McDiarmid. Typically, a few percentage points worth of white Trump voters in these districts will split their ticket for a white Democrat, and with how good the demographics here are for Democrats, they’re definitely at least slightly favored to hold this district despite the lack of incumbency. This is a Tilt Democratic hold.
One district in the black belt that Republicans failed to recruit a candidate for in 2022 was another district with a high African-American population and a white Democratic incumbent. HD-57 had its partisanship change to become much more Republican-leaning in the redistricting process: the district Republicans left uncontested in 2022 was 51% African-American and voted for Biden by 12 points. The new district, however, is 49% African-American and voted for Biden by 4 points. Incumbent Democrat Lucas Atkinson was first elected to the South Carolina House in a similar district based in Marion County and won with nearly 80% of the vote, showing that a significant amount of Trump voters split their ticket for him; Hillary Clinton won 58% of the vote in his seat in 2016.
Atkinson faced a black woman, Cynthia Ford, in the June Democratic primary and beat her by 12 points; her supporters complained about discrepancies in absentee votes and protests ensued over the results. Now, Republicans in the area accuse Democrats and Atkinson of ballot harvesting, which has opened an investigation from local law enforcement. This, coupled with the introduction of a lot of new voters to Atkinson in parts of Horry and Williamsburg counties, both of which voted for Atkinson’s primary opponent in the Democratic primary, point to a much closer race than Atkinson’s 2016 victory; he hasn’t faced a Republican since then. Still, he’ll likely earn some Trump voters in Marion County, where he’s from, and unless he loses support amongst black voters (especially new ones) in the district that will be voting for Kamala Harris, he should win against Republican Kevin Taylor Coleridge. We have this as a Tilt Democratic hold.
Overall, we have Democrats favored to net three seats in the South Carolina House this year. However, if turnout amongst African-Americans is high enough, they may be able to flip back the three seats they lost in 2022. If they do that and win every seat that they’re favored in our forecast, they’ll break the Republican supermajority in the House.
We can now turn our attention to the State Senate, where three black Democratic incumbents and one white Democratic incumbent are in tight re-elections as Republicans try and create a supermajority in the chamber, a task that simply requires flipping one seat held by Democrats. None of the black incumbents featured in this analysis were really targeted by Republicans in the 2020 State Senate elections as they looked to flip four State Senate seats, all of which were majority-white. They flipped three of those four seats.
The one majority-white district in 2020 that Republicans came up short in was Biden +5 SD-17. Incumbent Democrat Mike Fanning was the sole survivor targeted by Senate Republicans that year, and Republicans are back with a vengeance, despite Fanning’s district becoming slightly more Democratic in redistricting – his old seat voted for Biden by 1 point. Fanning outran Biden by 2 points in 2020, but Republicans have Fanning as their top-target this time instead of their fourth-best target. This is a tough district to pick a winner for as it’s been in our Toss-Up category all year; if Fanning loses, it won’t be too surprising since this is a rightward-trending district and he’s been a priority for Republicans to beat this time around. Still, we’re going with Republican Fanning as a slight favorite to hold this seat. This is a Tilt Democratic hold.
The Democratic-held district that perhaps had the most significant changes in redistricting is Biden +6 SD-39. Even with meek Republican opposition in 2020, Democrat Vernon Stephens underperformed Biden in his old district, which was 50% African-American in 2020, by 0.25%. Stephens was the only Democrat in the Black Belt to underperform the presidential nominee in 2020, and his new district has become significantly tougher. The new SD-39 is 53% white, stretching down to the uber-Republican suburbs in Charleston. To make matters worse for Stephens, his opponent, local attorney Tom Fernandez (R), has been consistently outspending him in this rightward-trending district. While he likely won’t lose much support in Orangeburg, there’s probably enough ticket-splitting in the Charleston suburbs that can sink him. It’s still likely a close race, but we have this as a Tilt Republican flip.
Republicans’ next best bet of flipping a Democratic held seat is Biden +6 SD-29, where 22-year-incumbent Gerald Malloy (D) is running for re-election in a district that was 47% African-American in 2020. Malloy outran Biden by 2-and-a-half points in 2020, but Republicans say he’s become less popular since then and are excited about their candidate JD Chaplin (R), who ran against Malloy in 2020. Malloy’s run a politically-savvy campaign to try and win over conservative-leaning voters in this increasingly-Republican district, and is a slight favorite to win re-election. We have this as a Tilt Democratic hold.
In another Democratic-held district with Marion County where Republicans probably regret not fielding a candidate the last go-around, 20-year incumbent Kent Williams (D) is running for re-election in Biden +7 SD-30. Williams has heavily outspent his opponent, Republican Rodney Berry, but since he’s never faced a Republican in a general election before we can’t gauge what his actual electoral strength is and have to default to the 2020-2022 election data in this rightward-trending district. Williams, given his spending and incumbency advantages, may be a heavier favorite than our model suggests, but we have this as a Tilt Democratic hold.
Overall, Republicans are slightly favored to create a supermajority in the South Carolina Senate this year, but Senate Democrats have a good shot at overcoming the odds. If they can win both of the seats we have Republicans slightly favored to flip, then they’ll live to fight another day as a regular minority instead of a superminority.
