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LEXINGTON COUNTY — Until this election, West Columbia resident Toshika Pope had been a reliable Democratic voter. She backed Joe Biden in 2020 and, before that, Hillary Clinton. But with a fellow Black woman — Kamala Harris — on the ballot in 2024, Pope realized something had changed.
This election, for the first time in her adult life, Pope couldn't bring herself to vote for a Democrat. "I kept wanting to identify with Kamala," she said outside of her polling place in West Columbia the morning of Nov. 5.
"I wanted to feel something. I just couldn't relate to her. And I tried.
I wanted to vote for her, really, I'm going to be honest, simply because she was a Black woman running. But I could not relate to her." She was not alone.
For decades, Black voters had been the cornerstone of Democrats' strength in the South. But in recent years, the once reliable voting bloc's habits have slowly been shifting rightward. While Black voters are still solidly aligned with Democratic candidates — exit polls from Reuters showed Harris won the same percentage of Black voters, 86 percent, that President Joe Biden won in 2020 — polls before the election showed a sizable uptick in support for Republican candidates in other corners of the country, particularly among young Black men.
Black South Carolina voters were no different. Some, like in a disappointing year in 2022, stayed home. Black voter turnout underperformed about five points lower than usual in early voting this year, according to internal numbers compiled by the South Carolina Republican Party.
But those that did vote, apparently voted redder. One survey by conservative South Carolina pollster Walter Whetsell the month before the election saw Black male support for Trump at roughly 22 percent, while overall Black support was roughly 18 percent. That's a massive uptick from 2016 exit polls where 9-in-10 Black voters in-state backed Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump.
The state Republican Party also said they saw gains in precincts with large Black populations they previously thought were unbreakable. Reva Sellers tapes election results on Election Day at the Charleston Election Warehouse Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024 in North Charleston.
"Reality just keeps pounding them," S.C. GOP Chairman Drew McKissick said in an interview on election night.
"And as long as candidates keep talking to them about issues that are relevant, you're fighting downhill. You don't need to make voters care about issues they already care about." Carnell Kinman, a West Columbia construction manager who last voted for Barack Obama in 2012, said he supported Trump primarily for his immigration policy, saying he believed migrants were driving down wages in the construction industry.
Russell Ott wins Senate District 26. Heather Bauer reelected to House District 75. Another, Lexington forklift operator and aspiring cryptocurrency investor James Shell and his son, Jakari, said they opposed Harris' position on abortion and expressed concerns over Democrats' positions on taxing unrealized capital gains, which would only impact taxpayers with net worths of more than $100 million.
"Even though they say it starts with the rich, we all know how that will go," he said. Shell, while part of a growing Black conservative movement, is still an outlier. He said his friends and coworkers often disagree with him on politics, even getting into an argument with a fellow coworker two days before the election.
But his motives are complicated. He said he never bought into Harris' credibility confronting issues facing the Black community, nor did he believe Harris had authenticity as an agent of change after four years as Biden's vice president. "You're not even bumping heads with the president now," he said.
"And if you're really trying to make a change, y'all should be clashing. Because what he's doing is not working. It's a failed system.
" But he also said he doesn't believe in narratives pushed by Black Democrats that Trump is a racist, or that his policies would actually be worse for the Black community. "Even Black people say ignorant stuff to other Black people," he said of Trump. "It's just that when they're rich, they really don't care.
" Some blamed disinformation for the gap in Black voter support for Democrats, or a misguided belief that issues facing Black voters could be resolved if a different party was in the White House. Quietly over 2 decades, this Midlands town has grown into South Carolina's Hispanic migrant capital "If they're not seeing the fruits of the labor of Democratic Party, they're gonna seek out other avenues to see why it's not helping them out," said Jeremy Jones, chairman of the Young Democrats of the Central Midlands. "It's a matter of asking 'why is everything around us falling apart?' and how they perceive that falling apart.
" Democrats in South Carolina are aware they have a branding problem. Marcurius Byrd, a Columbia-based Democratic strategist, said he often found himself pitching urban Black voters and rural Black voters different messages in various campaigns around the state, adding that many see a disconnect between Democratic policies and issues in their own daily lives. This cycle, that was evident in some statehouse districts with strong minority populations, where voters who typically bolster Democratic candidates ultimately fell to Republicans.
Senate District 39 — represented by Black Democrat Vernon Stephens of Orangeburg County — favored Democrats by 8 points, and had a voting age minority population of nearly 50 percent, most of whom were Black. He lost by two points. A voter casts their ballot inside the gym of Burke High School, Tuesday, Nov.
5, 2024, in Charleston. Sen. Kevin Johnson, another Black Democrat of Manning in Clarendon County, represented a district where nearly 47 percent of the voting population is Black, lost his re-election bid to Republican Jeff Zell by fewer than 700 votes.
Sen. Gerald Malloy of Darlington County, arguably the most powerful Black lawmaker in the South Carolina General Assembly, lost a district with similar demographics by fewer than 300 votes. "We're no longer in that place where the Black population is a monolith and we have one singular issue to deal with," he said in an interview on election night.
"In a sense, the Civil Rights movement was a success in that — I hate the phrasing of this, like, racism isn't dead — but as a core unifying factor for people, it isn't at the same level that it was for the previous generations when they came into power." "You have to actually go talk to people on an individual level these days," he added. "We all live in our own different types of bubbles and, as a party, we're not talking to people and learning what their interests are.
" Party leadership disagrees with the assertion that didn't happen. Talking to reporters after election day, South Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Christale Spain, who is Black, said the vast majority of the party's outreach in the lead-up to the election was to rural Black voters. What they couldn't overcome was the man at the top of the GOP ticket.
"We were talking to the voters in the districts," she told reporters. "We didn't have one big blanket message, especially in the Senate. You know, those messages were really research driven.
So I really can't say that was the case. I really feel like a lot of our races couldn't hold on just because of the tremendous turnout with Trump being at the top of the ticket." And still, for many Black voters on election day, Democratic policies did, in fact, align with their interests were.
One voter at a rural Lexington County precinct, Jason Collins, had always voted Democrat. He said he felt "energized" by having a woman of color on the ticket and by the issue of reproductive freedom. Ballot boxes are brought in and counted on Election Day at the Charleston Election Warehouse Tuesday, Nov.
5, 2024 in North Charleston. At that same polling place, Khadija Kelley — a customer service representative who claimed she cried when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 — said she was initially planning to cast her vote for Trump over his immigration policies until a comment he made at a late October rally saying he was going to enact policies to protect women “whether the women like it or not.” (Trump, incidentally, was referring to immigration, and was misquoted by Harris.
) "I just feel like he's gonna take us back 50 or 60 years as women," she said. "Everything we fought for. My grandmother, my great-grandmother, fought for for women's rights.
I couldn't push myself to do it." Another onetime Trump voter, Benjamin Goins of West Columbia, said he was "voting for the lesser evil" by switching to Harris because he did not believe Trump is honest and does not say what he really means. "I voted for Trump the last time," he said.
"I fact-checked myself on a lot of the things that he planned to be doing, and it's just not true." Two women leaving the polls had different reasons for supporting Harris. After a reporter called after them asking who they were voting for, both answered simply: Kamala.
"Because she's a Black woman!" one of the women yelled cheerfully..
