South Carolina voters send a message on affordability

On Tuesday, South Carolina voters made their voices heard. We'd seen quite a few polls (including several over the election season from SCPC), but the only poll that ultimately matters is when the voters go into the privacy of the voting booth.  

Annie Andrews made history in South Carolina as our state’s first elected female senator. She beat Darline Graham, her opponent, by 91,197 votes (51.3% to 46.8%). Senator-elect Andrews is the first Democrat to win election to the US Senate from South Carolina since Fritz Hollings in 1998. 

Republicans once again swept all of the constitutional officer races; the last time Democrats in South Carolina won a constitutional officer race was in 2006 when Jim Rex won the position of Superintendent of Education.  

The election showed that voters are focused on policy, not personality. Campaigns that focused on substantive issues that affect affordability like tax reform, insurance reform, and energy costs won, while those trying to attach their campaign to national figures failed.   

Note: All vote percentages in this analysis are unofficial election-night results, subject to county certification by November 6 and state certification by November 13, 2026. 

Senator: Annie Andrews is a fresh face on the South Carolina political scene. She previously ran for the House of Representatives against Nancy Mace, but this is the first elected office that she will hold. Andrews focused her campaign on the cost of living, bringing concrete numbers, data, and offering specific solutions to local and national issues. She ran advertisements and billboards that detailed just how much Americans are paying for groceries, insurance, and gasoline.

Her policy platform also includes pledges not to participate in pork-barrel spending, to fight for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, to oppose congressional stock trading, and to oppose foreign intervention, such as the war in Iran. She won with 51.3% of the vote compared with Darline Graham's 46.8%. Third-party candidates and write-in votes ultimately accounted for just 2.2% of the vote, meaning they would not have changed the outcome. 

Governor: Alan Wilson is a familiar name in a new position. He's served as our state's AG for the past 16 years, so there's little question of his political allegiance. However, as AG he largely focused on prosecutions and Supreme Court petitions. Now he has the opportunity to take the reins as the state's Chief Executive. His campaign was laser-focused on state policy, as opposed to some of his opponents, especially in the primary, who focused on personality and national talking points. He won with 51.6% of the vote to Democrat Jermaine Johnson's 47.1%. 

Governor-elect Wilson campaigned on eliminating the income tax and reforming Act 388 that governs property taxes. These reforms will need legislative approval, and he’ll have to work with the General Assembly to get these over the finish line. Alan Wilson advocated for expanding school choice, continuing the push for strong literacy instruction, and keeping politics out of the classroom. Governor-Elect Wilson campaigned on empowering his Lieutenant Governor, Mike Reichenbach to run the Families First Audit Initiative, which will audit agencies, seeking out waste, fraud, and abuse. 

Comptroller: Comptroller-elect Mike Burkhold is a new face to South Carolinians, having never previously held elected office. His campaign was laser focused on spending transparency and government efficiency. He released videos detailing state spending, government waste, and argued that our current state financial system needs serious reform. 

Comptroller-elect Burkhold advocated for building a website for the office so you can see the entirety of state spending without FOIA requests. His campaign focused on making bureaucratic issues interesting, and he’ll have a good bit of latitude to implement managerial changes without needing legislation.  He won with 52.2% of the vote to Democrat Tiffany Boozer's 47.8%. 

Superintendent: Superintendent Ellen Weaver hit the ground running four years ago and hasn't let off the gas. She ran a policy-focused campaign four years ago, and this year focused on the policy wins she has achieved over her first term. She's been an unapologetic supporter of education choice. Supt. Weaver has championed families and taxpayers by requesting investigations and takeovers of local school districts for fiscal waste and academic mismanagement.

These local districts are often heavily subsidized by state funds, and with state funding comes state responsibility. Superintendent Weaver's Department has championed cell phone bans, common-sense school library regulations, and school board ethics reforms that refocus the education system on academics rather than social issues and technology. She won with 51.1% of the vote to Democrat Sylvia Wright's 48.1%. 

Other statewide offices: As mentioned earlier, Republicans swept all constitutional offices. Mark Hammond defeated Jason Belton, 53% to 47%, marking the largest margin of victory for a Republican constitutional officer this cycle. Curtis Loftis prevailed over Vincent Coe, 52.5% to 47.4%, to retain his position as State Treasurer. Finally, in the Attorney General's race, David Stumbo defeated Richard Hricik, 52.3% to 47.6%. 

U.S. House of Representatives: Across the Palmetto State, Republicans continued to lose ground in Congress. Incumbents who sought reelection retained their seats, though some races were closer than expected. Joe Wilson won by just 1%, while Sheri Biggs secured a commanding 29.3% victory. William Timmons won by 6.1%, Jim Clyburn by 38.8% and Russell Fry by 13.5%. 

In District 1, Democrat Nancy Lacore defeated Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt, 49.7% to 48.6%, to claim the seat previously held by Nancy Mace. In the race to succeed Ralph Norman in District 5, former state Senator Wes Climer defeated Democrat Mallory Dittmer, 52.8% to 47.1%. 

The ultimate result is that South Carolina's congressional delegation has lost one Republican seat, leaving the state's delegation with a 5-2 Republican majority.   

Penny taxes 

All figures below are unofficial results from the South Carolina Election Commission's Election Night Reporting system, with all 46 counties and 2,312 of 2,312 precincts reporting.  

Thirteen separate 1-cent sales-tax measures were on the ballot statewide. Nine of the questions were county-wide, while four were municipal questions.  All the municipal tax hikes passed, while all but two of the county-wide tax hike proposals passed.  Interestingly enough, Greenville County rejected their 1-cent tax hike, but all four municipalities within the Greenville County’s bounds voted yes.    

Statehouse seats 

Ten sitting House members lost their general-election races on November 3, 2026, all Republicans defeated by Democrats. On these ten flips alone, the chamber moves from 89 Republicans–35 Democrats to 79–45, which loses the Supermajority for House Republicans.  

The biggest loss for House leadership is District 89, which is currently held by Micah Caskey, who just became the Majority leader of the House. He is separated from his opponent by 101 votes, and will face a recount. This election, alongside some retirements, will change the makeup of several key legislative committees. In seat-share terms, Republicans fall from 89 of 124 House seats (71.8%) to 79 (63.7%), with Democrats rising from 35 (28.2%) to 45 (36.3%) — below the 83 seats needed for a supermajority.   

Losing a supermajority largely harms House Republicans procedurally – they still have more than enough votes to pass bills, but their rules allow a supermajority to move legislation along faster, curtail debate, and to give conference committees free conference powers.  When conference committees meet, they are locked into debating only the House and Senate versions of the bill – they cannot make substantive policy compromises without obtaining free conference powers.  As a result, many bills go to conference to die due to irreconcilable differences between the two chambers.  Without a two thirds majority, the House will be unable to obtain free conference powers without a coalition of House Republicans and Democrats. 

House Rules also require reports and bills to be printed in the journal before consideration – a two thirds majority can overrule that requirement, but without those numbers, House Republicans will either have to wait a day before considering issues or band together with Democrats to move consequential legislation along.  That doesn’t become an issue until the end of session, when both chambers are scrambling to finish bills before Sine Die, and even a one or two day delay on the calendar can doom a bill. 

Across the board, Republican numbers have eroded significantly at both the national level and in South Carolina specifically, where Republicans lost a Senate seat, a congressional seat and 10 seats in the state House. As our most recent poll indicated, South Carolina voters are primarily concerned with economic issues, and their votes reflect dissatisfaction with the current affordability crisis.  

SCPC looks forward to working with both Democrats and Republicans to deliver economic relief to hardworking South Carolinians who clearly need it.