In a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump, South Carolina voted to send Democrat Annie Andrews to the Senate. Supporters react to early election results in favor of US Senator Jon Ossoff at an election night watch party hosted by the Democratic Party of Georgia after the midterms election in Atlanta, Georgia on November 3, 2026. (AFP)And it wasn’t even that close.The voters in a red state that Trump won by 17 points just two years ago, flatly rejected Senator Darline Graham, Trump’s handpicked replacement for her late brother.

She had joylessly muddled her way through a campaign for a job she barely seemed to want and certainly didn’t deserve. There is Keisha Lance Bottoms, who will become the first Black woman Governor in the nation’s history, after beating health executive Rick Jackson by eight points in Georgia.

There is Senator Jon Ossoff, a protege of the late Congressman John Lewis, who cruised to victory. And there is Gina Hinojosa, who will become the first Hispanic Governor of Texas, beating three-term Governor Greg Abbott by seven points.

James Talarico also won easily. The Senate race in deeply red, deeply Southern, Mississippi has not yet been called.

That in itself is a surprise. Trump won that state by 23 points two years ago and now a Black Democrat could win.Confession: I’m shocked.

I didn’t believe the polls or Democrats’ happy talk coming from down South.I believed recent history, which showed Republicans rallying around their own and shutting Democrats out of power in statewide races for decades, even as Democrats plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into races cycle after cycle, only to come up short. I thought it would be that way again.Also Read: What a Democratic Congress can and cannot do about Trump's war, tariffs and visa curbsBut Southern states have also forged a dogged activism, stretching back centuries.

That came into play on Tuesday night, helping Democrats weather a Republican gerrymander and a conservative attack on voting rights. Those moves wiped out several seats held by Black Democrats, but also seemed to boost Black turnout across the South. (See HBCU students marching 45 minutes to the nearest polling station in North Carolina, where Democrats flipped a Senate seat and several House seats.) Partly as a result, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is poised to become the first Black person to wield the speaker’s gavel in the House.It would be wrong to see these results as only a rebuke to Trump.

Yes, his deep unpopularity and his chosen candidates didn’t help his party. But the groundwork for these wins has been long in the making.The South, home to the majority of Black Americans, remains the country’s fastest growing region, with rapidly changing demographics as Whites voters age and people of color move south.

Georgia is now a majority-minority state.Bottoms, a former Atlanta Mayor, doesn’t win without Stacey Abrams’ organizing and registering rural black voters and nearly winning a Senate run in 2018. Andrews doesn’t win without Jaime Harrison, protege of Congressman Jim Clyburn, who lost by ten points in 2020, but raised a ton of money in a campaign led by Christale Spain, who is currently the first Black woman to serve as Chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party.With her win, Andrews, a pediatrician, sent a strong message to not only Trump, but also to her party, that the South, with its diversity and history of activism, can be a force and a bulwark for democracy. “South Carolina—you have shown the nation what’s possible,” she said. “You have shown the nation that in an era of partisan divides, of vitriol and name calling, in a politics dominated by billionaires, special interests, and insiders in Washington, that we will not bow down.

We will not back down. And we will chart our own course.”Also Read: From doctor to Senator: Abdul El-Sayed makes history as first Muslim elected to US Senate, defeats Trump-backed Mike RogersIn Georgia, Bottoms, recalled her great-great-grandmother, Betsy Peak, who was born in 1845 and buried in a cemetery filled with unmarked graves in Crawfordville, also the hometown of a former Georgia governor and Confederate leader. “I don't know what dreams Betsy Peak had for her children or for her grandchildren or the generations that she would never meet, but I know I am standing on shoulders made of steel,” Lance Bottoms said. “So, yes, Crawfordville produced the Confederacy’s vice president, but tonight it also produced your next governor.

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.”That is the lesson the South offered tonight. It could be a roadmap for Democrats looking to expand their tent and for a nation grappling with a divisive past — and present.

There has long been talk of the “new south,” with the old ways, the mores, the customs, fading. It happened, though, in fits and starts.

And this time it was a wave, built on decades of work and hope.This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.