Republicans rack up another good election night in South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Just like the 12 other elections this century, it was a good night for Republicans in South Carolina.

The GOP continues to gain seats almost 25 years after taking control of nearly the entire state government. On Tuesday, they did not lose a single incumbent and likely added four Senate seats to have a 34-12 advantage in the chamber. Democrats had a 14-seat lead back in 1992.

It’s the first time Republicans will have a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate, which assures they can end filibusters with ease. In the House, Republicans held firm with 87 seats in a 124-member chamber with two vacancies. The combination means Republicans can put constitutional amendment on ballots without a single Democratic vote.

The Associated Press has not declared a winner in two of the seats Republicans said they flipped because they have margins under the 1% of the vote that triggers a mandatory recount, including one race with a 32-vote margin in unofficial totals and provisional ballots left to argue over and count. But with modern voting machines, recounts almost never change a result in South Carolina.

“South Carolina sent us 34 Republican senators. We owe it to them to use them,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said Wednesday.

Exactly what that means will have to wait until he gathers the 34 members for a caucus meeting later this month, Massey said. More loosening of gun laws is a long-desired conservative goal, and for some another is a total ban on abortion instead of the state’s current law making abortions illegal after cardiac activity is detected about six weeks into a pregnancy.

“Life is a personal issue. Like many things, I’m going to have to find out where my new members are,” Massey said.

And there are a lot of them. In an institution where senators often stay for decades, there will be 13 new members in 2025. Nine of them are Republicans.

South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick compared his 2024 election plans to a buffet at the Golden Corral. There were so many seats both locally and in the General Assembly that he hoped to flip that he couldn’t do it all.

“You can’t win everything,” McKissick said Wednesday. “But I hate losing more than I hate watching the Lifetime Channel.”

The story Tuesday night wasn’t much different than on recent election nights. Republicans in South Carolina swamped Democrats with a huge wave in 1994, taking over the House, and and again in 2000 taking over the Senate.

And the waves just keep coming, claiming more of the state’s political beach even as Democrats chose South Carolina for their first presidential primary this year.

Redistricting helped. Republicans won at least 57% of the vote in every Senate district they controlled at the start of election night.

Over the past eight elections, Republicans have not lost seats in the Senate, and they now control more than 75% of the chamber in a state where Donald Trump has never topped 59% in a presidential race.

Continuing a trend of rural areas getting quite Republican quite fast, all four seats the Democrats lost were outside cities. Four Democratic senators — three Black and one white — were swamped in their rural precincts and a few rapidly growing suburban areas, and the dwindling minority population wasn’t enough to keep up.

The GOP flipped four sheriff’s and three coroner’s offices from Democrat to Republican. McKissick said success on that end of the ballot digs the hole even deeper for Democrats because rural voters are more likely to vote for the local official they like by hitting the straight ticket button for all Republicans.

On Tuesday, nearly 800,000 of the 2.4 million votes cast were Republican straight ticket. The GOP has 21% more straight ticket voters than Democrats. Republicans had only topped Democrats among those voters starting in 2016.

“Straight ticket support and the more people that don’t have a reason to split a ballot is a big, unsung bit of the secret sauce we’ve had around here,” McKissick said.

Democrats on Tuesday protected a House seat in Columbia and near Charleston and kept a Columbia area Senate seat. They flipped one House seat that was neutralized by losing an incumbent in another district.

South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Christale Spain said the party spent money, mailed literature and made phone calls but that Trump’s broad support, combined with longterm advantages for Republicans like districts gerrymandered to their liking, were too much to overcome, especially in the state Senate races.

“It makes it difficult for us to recruit serious candidates — those folks who we know would be great elected officials — because nobody wants to lose,” Spain said Wednesday. “The message is: We’re not giving up.”

As for McKissick, he plans to enjoy all the Republican gains in South Carolina and nationally for a few days before turning his attention to 2026. The governor’s seat will be open. Lindsey Graham’s U.S. Senate seat is up. And more possibilities on the political buffet beckon.

As much as he would like to try, it won’t always be this way for McKissick and Republicans.

In 1932, 98% of South Carolina voters — almost all white in a state where nearly half the residents were Black but systematically blocked from casting ballots — chose Democrat Franklin Roosevelt for president at the start of the Great Depression. It was his biggest single-state win in his landslide.

“The only thing that is permanent in politics is the next election. You can either do well or you can do bad,” McKissick said. “You need to focus on the fundamentals of having a good message that is relevant to people, organization to connect with them and get the vote out and raising the money to pay for them.”