How Redistricting Has Affected South Carolina’s Congressional Races
South Carolina’s new congressional map is quite similar to the old one: six red seats and one blue seat.
However, there was one important change made to the coastal 1st District, which Democrats were able to win in 2018 before Republican Rep. Nancy Mace took it back in 2020. The district is now 3 percentage points redder, which likely locks it up for the GOP, especially in 2022’s political environment. Still, this hasn’t stopped Mace from aruging, perhaps disingenuously, that her primary challenger, former state Rep. Katie Arrington, would lose the seat to Democrats in the fall.
The other important feature of South Carolina’s new map is something it doesn’t have: a second predominantly Black seat. South Carolina’s population is almost two-sevenths Black, yet only one of the state’s seven congressional districts was designed to elect Black voters’ candidate of choice.
This wasn’t a surprise, of course, since Republicans controlled redistricting in South Carolina and a second Black seat would have likely voted Democratic. Voting-rights advocates are nonetheless suing over the map’s lack of Black representation.