Skylar Laird and Jessica Holdman/S.C. Daily Gazette
COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s GOP will no longer rule with supermajority power in both chambers following Democratic upsets in the state House.
Democrats managed to flip 10 seats across the Palmetto State on Election Day, according to unofficial results from the state Election Commission, though one of those will require an automatic recount under state law.
An 11th Republican seat also remains in question as Simpsonville Rep. David Vaughn’s 42-vote win over Democrat John MacCarthy also heads to a recount.
“It’s the largest single net pickup that we can find in modern history,” Jay Parmley, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party, told reporters Wednesday.
The 10 Republicans who lost:
District 12: Daniel Gibson, of Greenwood
District 57: Lucas Atkinson, of Marion
District 64: Fawn Pedalino, of Turbeville
District 66: Jackie Terribile, of Fort Mill
District 89: Micah Caskey, of West Columbia
District 92: Brandon Cox, of Goose Creek
District 98: Greg Ford, of Summerville
District 102: Harriet Holman, of Ridgeville
District 116: James Teeple, of Johns Island
District 122: Bill Hager, of Hampton
The flips erase GOP gains from the last two election cycles. The GOP first surpassed two-thirds control with the 2022 election, which gave Republicans an 88-36 advantage in the chamber.
Taking seats back
House Democrats’ goal for 2026 was to take back six seats.
In 2022, Republicans riding a red wave flipped eight seats. Half of them ousted Democrats in districts previously considered blue strongholds. (Other pickups came in new seats created by the post-census redrawing of lines.)
Two years later, as President Donald Trump’s win created another red wave, Democrats not only failed to win any of those back as they’d hoped, but Harriet Holman ousted then-Rep. Joe Jefferson to become the Legislature’s first Black Republican female.
Then, earlier this year, Pee Dee Rep. Lucas Atkinson of Mullins switched parties after a decade in the chamber and filed to run for re-election as a Republican.
Democrats wanted that seat back too.
This year, they prevailed in meeting their goal — and then some.
The largest margin occurred in a district covering all of rural McCormick County and parts of Greenwood County. Four years after ousting Anne Parks, a Black Democrat, from a seat she’d held for a quarter century, Daniel Gibson lost by nearly 10 percentage points.
The bigger surprise came with four unexpected flips.
“These numbers are just really through the roof for us,” Parmley said.
Rep. Brandon Cox, a two-term Republican from a Lowcountry district that hasn’t had competition in years, was defeated by 3 percentage points. Rep. Greg Ford, who won a special election in January in Summerville, lost by 10 points to Sonja Ogletree Satani, 11 months after narrowly defeating her.
Democrats even ousted a member of the hardline Freedom Caucus — a feat they never expected, since its members typically represent uber-conservative districts. Still, freshman Rep. Jackie Terribilie of Fort Mill lost to Democrat Heather Hart by nearly 3 points.
And, in one of the most shocking Statehouse defeats of the night, House Majority Leader Micah Caskey, a 10-year incumbent, finished about 110 votes behind Democrat Joe Madge.
Caskey’s fellow Republicans just elected him their caucus leader in August to replace retiring Majority Leader Davey Hiott of Pickens.
“As you may have seen, last night’s election results haven’t gone as we’d hoped,” the West Columbia attorney said in a post on X.
Under state law, his losing margin of less than 1 percentage point automatically triggered a recount, meaning the results must be retabulated to verify the winner. But in an era of electronic vote-counting, errors aren’t expected.
“To be honest with you, there isn’t much reason to expect a change,” Caskey wrote in his post. He added that he’d address the results after the recount.
Mark Weber, chair of the Lexington County Republican Party, attributed the loss to a lack of Republican enthusiasm.
“We must renew our commitment to voter engagement, strengthen our organization, and work toward reclaiming that seat in 2028,” Weber said in a statement.
Three other Lowcountry Republicans eked out wins, narrowly avoiding recounts in their races. Republican Reps. Sylleste Davis, Gary Brewer, and Jordan Pace, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, each won by fewer than 400 votes.
Meanwhile, Democrats held onto all of their existing seats.
“It sends a message to the Republican-led General Assembly,” South Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Christale Spain told the SC Daily Gazette Tuesday night. “This is from the national level all the way down back home at the Statehouse. We’re primed. The infrastructure is built. We’re ready to start really competing all across the state.”
Spain also said she thinks it “brings the temperature down in the chamber” after an unsuccessful, last-minute attempt to redraw South Carolina’s congressional map ahead of the midterms.
“It is a mandate that Democrats are not going to take it,” Spain said.
Republicans didn’t show up
Nationwide, Democratic enthusiasm propelled candidates up and down ballots into office, including in heavily Republican states such as South Carolina.
Meanwhile, plenty of Republicans who didn’t like their choices stayed home, said House Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister.
Bannister’s home county of Greenville, a Republican fortress where 58% of voters cast ballots for President Donald Trump in 2024, went blue in the U.S. Senate race.
Democrat Annie Andrews, who wound up flipping that seat, received nearly 50% of the vote in the state’s most populous county, compared to 47.5% of its voters choosing to keep appointed GOP Sen. Darline Graham. Third-party candidates and write-in choices made up the difference, according to unofficial returns.
Bannister’s own race became a nailbiter. He defeated Democrat Caroline Avinger by 5 percentage points.
Avinger received as many votes as Bannister expected for a Democratic challenger, he said. But not as many people came out to support him as in previous years, suggesting many of the district’s Republicans stayed home, he added.
“There’s not a new wave of Democratic voters,” Bannister said. “There’s a big wave of Republicans choosing not to vote.”
Incumbent GOP legislators said they believe more ballots came from Democrats who don’t usually vote, rather than a sudden change of heart among Republican voters or an influx of new Democrats.
Democrats have been hoping a population surge would turn the state purple. But previous elections suggest many of the newest South Carolinians vote Republican, as they helped turn the state deeper shades of red in 2022 and 2024.
“I don’t think Republican voters suddenly decided the values they’ve held dear their whole lives were suddenly wrong,” Pace said. “They didn’t show up to vote.”
That suggests Republicans are unhappy with their options, Pace and Bannister said.
“Republican voters were unmotivated or uninspired by our candidates,” Bannister said.
They and Cox pointed to a trickle-down effect from federal races.
In the August contest that decided who replaced the late U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on the ballot, U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman won Greenville County in both the 10-way, special GOP primary and the runoff two weeks later won by Graham. Many of Norman’s supporters likely stayed home or just didn’t vote for Graham. Clearly, there were crossover votes for Andrews, as she was the only Democrat to win a statewide race Tuesday.
Half of the flips occurred in the Lowcountry, where the 1st Congressional District flipped to blue as well. Retired Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore claimed a narrow win Wednesday morning with a leading margin of 1.01 percentage points, just barely above the cutoff for an automatic recount.
“The Democrats had a great campaign season,” Cox said, likening it to Republicans’ major wins in the past two elections.
The state Democratic Party made a major push this year, Parmley said.
The party found Democrats to run for every one of the state’s 124 districts — a first in decades — challenging Republicans even in districts where they typically run unopposed.
Party leaders hoped those local efforts could help drum up support for Democrats in statewide races as well.
“We are absolutely convinced that through the volunteer efforts, through the paid efforts, that this made a big difference here, to capture this sort of national frustration, national mood,” Parmley said.
What the flips mean for the House
Republicans still hold 79 out of 124 House seats. That means the GOP keeps a comfortable majority, even while losing its supermajority, as House leadership pointed out Tuesday night.
“Voters have given us the opportunity to continue delivering results and that’s exactly what we intend to do,” Rep. Brandon Newton said in a statement. The Lancaster Republican defeated his Democratic challenger by 13 points.
“We have important work ahead of us and we look forward to getting back to work,” Speaker Murrell Smith said in a statement.
Bannister doesn’t expect the influx of Democrats to change much when legislators return in January, he said.
The parties will always disagree on certain issues, though perhaps party leaders will decide to focus more on bipartisan subjects in the coming year, he added.
He saw Democratic support as a clear indication that voters are worried about prices and want state leaders to help however possible.
“I think our voters want us to focus on helping small businesses, cutting taxes, and getting out of the way of their ability to make a living wage,” Bannister said.
The budget process, which Bannister oversees, already tends to work across party lines for funding support, and he doesn’t expect the chamber’s makeup to change that, he said.
Pace, who typically opposes the state spending plan, considered the lack of Republican enthusiasm in this election a condemnation of bipartisan efforts. He believes the message is that conservative Republicans don’t want to vote for politicians willing to compromise.
His takeaway suggests the bickering between the majority GOP caucus and the Freedom Caucus he chairs will continue.
With fewer Republicans in the chamber, though, the two Republican caucuses may have to work together under a united front, Pace said.
For the past four years, House floor debates have often devolved into intra-party spats that split the GOP vote. Democrats sometimes just watched as Republicans went after each other.
When they work together, though, Republicans can easily pass legislation both caucuses support: “This is a good opportunity to do exactly that,” Pace said.
