Black voters help propel Democrats, including history makers, in sweeping midterm victories

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Sheyann Webb-Christburg was 8 when she was part of the crowd of civil rights marchers attacked on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, months before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act .

On Tuesday night, she stood in Montgomery, Alabama, to celebrate a resounding political victory for Black voters and others who refused to accept the law’s recent diminishment by the U.S. Supreme Court and several state legislatures across the South.

“I think a new movement has started,” she said after U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures won another term in Congress despite Alabama Republican lawmakers reshaping his district with the intent of making his reelection more difficult.

Strong turnout among Black voters helped propel Figures , 41, over his Republican opponent in a new district that President Donald Trump won by double digits just two years ago. It was among several victories for Black Democrats across the South — including the governor's race in Georgia — along with near-misses in places like Florida where Republicans have been dominant.

Party leaders and activists framed the results as a repudiation of Trump and of the Supreme Court's decision this year that gutted the Voting Rights Act and allowed Republican-led states to redistrict in a way that weakened Black congressional representation .

The Republican president’s crackdown on diversity initiatives in his second term and his efforts to limit how the U.S. government tells the nation’s history on race and civil rights also motivated Black voters, said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter.

“We can smell racism. We can see it … we can feel it, and we know how to respond to it,” Brown said. “Our survival has been based on our ability to resist it and respond and navigate around it.”

The surge helped Georgia's Keisha Lance Bottoms become the first Black woman in U.S. history elected as a governor. Black women also won races for Georgia attorney general, secretary of state, agriculture commissioner, insurance commissioner, labor commissioner and school superintendent.

In North Carolina, U.S. Rep. Don Davis, a Black Democrat, won reelection in a district Republicans had redrawn to be favorable to the GOP.

In Mississippi, where Black voters make up a larger share of the population than any other state, Scott Colom was locked in a razor-thin battle with Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in a state that hasn’t sent a new Democratic senator to Washington since the era of Jim Crow segregation.

“Unlike all the people across the country that might be surprised, our campaign, our volunteers, the people of Mississippi are not surprised,” Colom said Wednesday.

Polling and the results from Election Day showed an uptick in Black turnout and support compared with recent election cycles.

In Georgia, about 9 in 10 Black men voted for Bottoms, according to The AP Voter Poll . By comparison, about three-quarters supported then-Vice President Kamala Harris in her 2024 presidential loss to Trump. In Clayton County in metro Atlanta, where about two-thirds of the population is Black, Bottoms received almost 86,000 votes — about 13,600 more than Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is also Black, received in her 2022 race for governor .

The changes among Black men this year were big enough to shift Black voters overall. About 9 in 10 Black voters supported the Democratic candidate in their local U.S. House race this year, up from about 8 in 10 who supported Harris in 2024.

Black women’s support stayed steadier because they were one of the few groups that didn’t shift meaningfully toward Trump in 2024.

After slavery was abolished, Black Americans entered Congress and other elective offices during Reconstruction, but disenfranchisement, violence and discriminatory laws helped severely erode that representation. Now, more than 160 years since Reconstruction and 61 years since the Voting Rights Act, they are serving in more statewide positions in which diverse voting blocs are their constituents.

This year, the Supreme Court's weakening of the Voting Rights Act led Congressional Black Caucus leaders to warn they could lose up to 19 seats, roughly a third of their total roster. But with votes still being tallied, their potential losses nationally appeared well short of that.

Harris, the first Black woman to hold nationwide office, said the results should be “a huge wake-up call” for the Democratic Party.

“I’ve long believed that we have failed to put the resources into Southern states” because of a “misdirected perception of who the people in those states are and what they want,” Harris told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Abrams, who twice lost races for Georgia governor, said the results — the wins and the losses — validate what she’s argued for nearly two decades about investing in organizations in Southern and Sun Belt states.

“You weren’t talking about massive margins,” she said of losses in Louisiana, Florida and Tennessee. “When we underinvest, especially states with significant populations of color, we throttle our own ability to expand the map.”

The celebrations didn't extend everywhere.

Tennessee Republicans split a congressional district representing Memphis, a majority Black city, into three. Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson ran for one of them and conceded in a close race that the AP has not called.

“We knew from the beginning the race would be extremely close," said Amber Sherman, lead Tennessee organizer for Black Voters Matter, which helped organize for Pearson's campaign.

She said the higher voter turnout across the South in particular proved that Black voters believed the “redistricting was wrong, and it was racist.”

In Florida, Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon , a progressive who identifies as a democratic socialist, had been largely written off by national party leaders as a hopeless cause in a state where Republicans romped by nearly 20 percentage points four years ago. Nixon lost by fewer than 3 percentage points.

In Louisiana, Trump-endorsed three-term congresswoman Julia Letlow barely eked out a victory in the U.S. Senate race against her Democratic opponent, Jamie Davis, a Black farmer who launched his campaign with virtually no statewide political profile. In a state that Trump carried by a 22 percentage point margin in 2024, Letlow won Tuesday by fewer than 2 percentage points.

Louisiana Democratic Party Chair Randal Gaines said he sought national party financing. Davis raised more than $4 million from individual contributions, but his campaign says it received nothing from the Democratic National Committee or the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

“We were within striking range of victory, and additional funding would have guaranteed it,” Gaines told the AP.

Republicans reduced the voting-age Black population in Figures' district from 48% to 40%. But he did not flinch from running or dwell on the circumstances as he campaigned. Instead, he focused on voters' economic struggles and broader frustrations with Trump.

“People are just tired, man. They’re tired of the lack of decency. They’re tired of the lack of integrity. They’re tired of the lack of honesty,” he said.

Figures' victory was propelled by heavy turnout in Montgomery, a predominantly Black city and Democratic stronghold. Some polling places saw lines that stretched blocks for much of Election Day.

Bottoms, who did not face redistricting challenges running statewide, also focused on the economy and helping voters of all demographics. But she also embraced the significance of the moment, recalling that she traced her family lineage to an antebellum plantation in Crawfordville, the Georgia town that produced the vice president of the Confederacy.

“Tonight should remind us all that no matter what community we come from, Georgia is not defined by one moment in time or by one person,” she said. “It’s been defined by all of us, and I will be a governor for everyone in this state.”

Barrow reported from Washington and Brumback from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Jack Brook in New Orleans, Gary Fields and Linley Sanders in Washington and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report.