Years of Republican-led efforts to disenfranchise Black citizens appears to be having the opposite effect, new data show.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which stripped away core protections for majority-Black districts under the Voting Rights Act, when Republican legislatures moved to redraw Black congressional seats, Black voters in Southern states responded by turning out well above their historical baseline, the report from independent political media organization VoteHub shows.
“The early evidence suggests Callais may have produced an unintended consequence,” write the report’s authors. “While the decision strengthened Republican efforts to protect their House majority, it also appears to have reenergized Black political participation across much of the Black Belt, a region where Democratic engagement had largely plateaued.”
Mississippi’s primaries took place before the Callais decision came out, but the state’s majority-Black counties came in more than a percentage point ahead of the statewide rate, at 17.1 percent. Jefferson County — Mississippi’s second-most-Black county, behind Claiborne — posted the largest positive turnout differential in the state, 9.5 points above the state rate.
Overall, turnout statewide in Mississippi’s primary was low, with fewer than one in six eligible voters casting a ballot, the report shows. But a surge of interest in Mississippi’s race for U.S. Senate has put the state on the radar of national political observers and donors and could shape the midterms.
Black voters in Mississippi already turn out in higher numbers than their white counterparts.
In the 2024 and 2020 elections, Black Mississippians were national leaders in voter turnout. In the 2024 general election, according to research and policy nonprofit KFF (formerly Kaiser Family Foundation), 70.8 percent of eligible Black Mississippians voted — slightly ahead of the state’s white turnout rate of 69.4 percemt, and ahead of the statewide rate overall.
That 1.4-point turnout margin is the largest of any state in the country. Mississippi’s raw Black turnout rate also ranks second nationally, trailing only Oregon, a state with a Black population too small for the comparison to hold significant meaning.
Black turnout was even higher four years earlier, when 72.8 percent of African Americans in Mississippi turned out compared to 68.9 percent of white Mississippians. Mississippi is one of only a handful of states where African Americans register to vote at a higher rate than white voters — 82.1 percent to 81.3 percent.
After Republican redistricting efforts in light of Callais, Black turnout surged to a nearly six point average turnout differential in majority-Black counties in Louisiana, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, where the state held primaries for governor and Senate but postponed its primaries for House of Representatives until August.
Image: Voting booths (via C x 2, Flickr Commons)