A year ago, it would have seemed unthinkable for Republicans to all but abandon hope of winning Senate seats in Georgia and North Carolina. And Democrats competing in South Carolina, Mississippi and Florida? Forget it.
But on the eve of the election, that is the scenario in Southern states, where Republicans have long dominated.
Democrats have struggled for so long in the South that any potential gains in the midterm elections — which could help tilt control of the Senate to their party — still seem like a fever dream.
A victory in many of these Southern states would give Democrats a bigger foothold than they’ve had in years in a region that, in many recent elections, has been awash in red.
And it could matter far beyond 2026. The South’s importance in national politics will only grow. A party that cannot win there risks becoming irrelevant for a decade.
The 2030 census is expected to capture just how many Americans have moved to the Sun Belt, a region that extends roughly from the Southeast west to Arizona. Northern states are likely to lose congressional seats — and Electoral College votes for presidential elections. Southern states, where Republican lawmakers may continue to dilute some Black representation, will likely gain them.
“As goes the South, so goes the nation,” the Rev. Raphael Warnock, one of Georgia’s two Democratic senators, recently told volunteers in Durham, N.C., where he was campaigning for Roy Cooper, the state’s Democratic Senate nominee.
Southern Democrats including Mr. Warnock are eyeing the calendar — and the upcoming electoral math — with an increasing sense of urgency. That is why Mr. Warnock and others have spent part of this year on the road, stumping for fellow Democrats as they try to grow their voter coalition. Mr. Warnock, a potential 2028 presidential hopeful, was fresh off a trip to Mississippi and on his way to South Carolina.
The Democratic revival in the South has forced Republicans to play defense in Senate races in South Carolina and Mississippi, racing to spend advertising money and send President Trump to rally MAGA loyalists in deeply conservative territory, just in case.
“It’s still the South, but it’s a different South than it was 20 years ago,” said former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who helped build the Republican Party in his state and flip it red.
Although Texas is not usually considered part of the South, Mr. Hutchinson noted the number of Californians who have moved there in recent years, as well as the number of people from New York and other relatively liberal Northern states who have moved to northwest Arkansas. “Their politics are not what we’ve always known in the traditional South,” he said.
This year looks especially tough for Republicans, and Democrats have fielded a strong set of candidates in the South, including Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, the incumbent Democrat, and Mr. Cooper, the popular former North Carolina governor. But that may not be the case a few years from now, Mr. Hutchinson added.
Some Republicans questioned whether Democrats’ apparent strength this year would endure. Joel McElhannon, a retired Republican political strategist in Georgia, advised not to conflate a disappointing year in the South for Republicans with the onset of a trend toward Democrats.
“Even if you saw a circumstance where a Democrat wins South Carolina, for example, or Texas, there’s a pretty good chance that person’s going to lose in the next go-round,” he said. “I just don’t see that being a true cultural shift.”
An exception might be Georgia, where an increasingly diverse electorate has made winning statewide elections harder for Republicans. Georgia is likely to remain a purple battleground for years to come, Mr. McElhannon said.
New census data will be used to reapportion Congressional districts and electoral votes in time for the 2032 elections. Then, Mr. McElhannon said, “the big blue wall kind of goes away.”
He was referring to Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which helped former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. win in 2020. A new map weighted toward the South is “going to be a very different kind of calculus,” he said.
What makes Southern Democrats effective is that they “understand how important it is to work across the aisle,” Mr. Cooper told reporters last month after casting his ballot in Raleigh, N.C. “That’s something that’s going to be healing to the rest of the country, if we can get to Washington and we can work to restore trust in the federal government.”
It is not just centrist Democrats who see an opening. Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a Florida Democrat, said the South was a proving ground for progressives to show that their policies could appeal to a broad, diverse electorate.
“We’re used to organizing in tough places,” he said. “The Southern progressive movement is less about this ideological debate, and it’s more about the fact that we think government should be working for people.”
Mr. Frost has helped grow a year-round grass-roots campaign in Central Florida. Two national unions — the Service Employees International Union and Unite Here, which represents hospitality workers — have used a similar approach to devote resources to the South, a region where labor has been relatively weak in recent decades.
“Demographic changes tell us that, come 2032, states like Florida and Georgia and Texas and North Carolina cannot be left behind,” April Verrett, the S.E.I.U. president, said. “So there is an immediate need, but there’s also a longer, generational calling.”
Gwen Mills, the international president of Unite Here, said her union had campaigned for Senate and House races this year in Miami, Houston and Charlotte, N.C. — areas that “a lot of Democrats have written off, but our members live and work there.”
Part of the challenge for both parties is persuading Southern voters that politicians care about them outside of election years.
“Don’t think of us as a third world country, that the only time that you come and see us, or you want to talk to us, is during a political time,” said Frederick Taylor, 54, a mental health therapist in Mississippi. “I feel ignored, except for major voting events.”
Scott Colom, the Democratic Senate nominee in Mississippi, said most national Democrats ignored him for much of his race against Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican who is seeking a second full term.
“For too long, Mississippi hasn’t been a lost cause — it’s been a betrayed cause,” Mr. Colom said. Democrats have acted as though “we’re not going to fight to let those voters know they have another option.”
That is why Mr. Warnock has called for real investment in the region.
“We can win in Mississippi, but even if we don’t, it would be foolhardy for Democrats not to lean into that state,” Mr. Warnock said in an interview, after rallying volunteers in Durham getting ready to canvass for Mr. Cooper.
“It’s not fixed in one cycle,” he said. “The party brand is not good. I think people are certainly fed up with Donald Trump and his policies and his enablers — but that doesn’t mean they’re in love with Democrats.”
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting from Corinth, Miss.
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