Trump-won counties lost 26% turnout while Harris counties fell 19%
Midterm elections normally draw lower voter participation than presidential contests, but the 2026 map broke that pattern in Democratic-leaning counties. From Louisiana to the Carolinas, counties that voted for Harris in 2024 came closer to matching — and in some cases exceeding — presidential turnout. Counties won by Trump saw a much sharper decline and fewer Republican votes.
In the six southern states analyzed, turnout fell by 19% in Harris-won counties and by 26% in Trump-won counties, where parishes play the role counties play elsewhere. The same six states swung an average of 22 points toward Democrats, against a national swing of about 14.5 points.
NPR reported that the differential turnout was a key factor in Democrats flipping Senate seats in North Carolina, South Carolina and Mississippi, and contributed to the closer-than-expected margin in Louisiana’s Senate race.
The Senate results tracked the pattern closely. In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom outperformed Harris, earning roughly 8,100 more votes than she did in 2024; his margin over incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith stood at just over 5,600 votes as final ballots were tallied. Democratic Senate nominees across the six states earned more raw votes than Harris in 170 counties, while Republican nominees garnered hundreds of thousands fewer votes than Trump.
In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff finished with roughly 79,000 fewer votes than Harris won in the state two years earlier, even though the state cast more than a million fewer votes overall. All 159 Georgia counties shifted toward Democrats, and Ossoff flipped a dozen of them, including suburban Fayette County, on his way to a 14-point victory.
South Carolina recorded some of the largest Democratic turnout gains, with Greenville, Spartanburg and Lexington counties posting the biggest increases in raw Democratic votes from 2024. Greenville, which backed Trump by 20 points two years ago, flipped to support Sen.-elect Annie Andrews by about two points.
Black voter participation was part of the story. Voting data and polls in special elections and primaries before the midterms showed a surge in Black voter participation, spurred in part by the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which gutted part of the Voting Rights Act. That decision led to changed congressional maps across the South, including Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and North Carolina. North Carolina’s lines were redrawn in a way that aimed to elect an 11-3 Republican majority delegation; NPR reported that North Carolina Democrats are now on track to hold an 11-3 majority.
Majority-Black counties overall posted about 85% turnout, compared with 76% for white, non-Hispanic majority counties. Sixteen majority-Black counties recorded more Democratic votes than in 2024, 12 of them in Mississippi. Clay County, Mississippi, had the largest turnout increase — 17 points from 2024 to 2026.
The Republican drop-off was steepest in North Carolina, where former Gov. Roy Cooper flipped the Senate race by a 20-point margin. Former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley earned 1.25 million fewer votes than Trump did when he carried the state in 2024, a roughly 43% drop in GOP support.
No county or parish across the six states came close to matching Trump’s 2024 vote totals. The smallest drop-off came in Greene County, Georgia, at 83% — the only one of 518 counties where Republicans earned more than 80% of Trump’s 2024 raw votes. North Carolina as a whole recorded only two-thirds of its 2024 Republican votes, with Wake and Mecklenburg counties, home to Raleigh and Charlotte, posting the biggest declines — about 100,000 and 90,000 fewer GOP voters respectively.
Atlanta and its suburbs also saw notable Republican declines, with Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb and Cherokee counties each losing between 35,000 and 77,000 GOP votes. Democrats saw smaller losses in those areas, with slight gains in Gwinnett and Cherokee counties.