Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a six-part series by pollster Brent Buchanan on the politics of the American South. Last week, Buchanan — a Montgomery, Alabama native — laid out why the South holds the keys to political control in some surprising ways. This week, Buchanan’s back to explore the shifting priorities of minority voters in the South — and why Democrats shouldn’t take those voters for granted.
We hope you enjoy.
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It’s a myth — and a costly mistake — for political campaigns and the mainstream media to treat minority voting behavior as monolithic and permanently Democratic.
As we highlighted in the first installment of this six-part series, America’s political realignment is already underway. In the South, the Democratic Party’s long-held assumption that minority voters would forever anchor their coalition to decide national elections is unraveling. As we’ll break down, Hispanic and Black voters are increasingly prioritizing economic concerns over the new standard Democratic playbook of identity politics.
In this massive analysis of the American South, we examined not only the demographic variables, survey responses, and trends within education, income, gender, age, and partisanship, but infused some specific findings from our latest National Voter Trends (NVT) poll to bring greater clarity about minority voters throughout the South.
With sustained population increases and the anticipated addition of even more congressional seats, Republicans have new opportunities to attract minority voters if they’re willing to invest in sustained outreach. But just because Democrats are struggling to maintain control, their losses don’t mean Republicans will automatically benefit.
DATA NUGGET: While Republicans gained from a partisanship perspective from 2020 to 2024, some of this was a factor of turnout, with Republicans losing 3% from 2020 to 2024, versus Democrats falling 16% in the same time scale.
“As we said in part one, the South is a deeply complex region with vast overlays of cultural, religious, and political variables that transcend state lines,” said Nicholas Valdiviez, Cygnal’s Sampling Lead on this project. “How Southern minority voters think and feel is no different.”
The Soulful South
This shift is most evident in two key regions we’ve dubbed the Soulful South and the Tex-Mex Nexus.
Starting with the Soulful South, black voters are challenging long-held assumptions about their political loyalties. This region of the South has the highest percentage of black Americans, and was the only region that has grown year-over-year for Republicans since 2012. That shows this shifting demographic is more than just a blip, rather, a consistent move to the right.
DATA NUGGET: Among Republican and right-leaning independent voters, The Daily Wire garnered 41 percent of voters who converted from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024 as their go-to news source. More here.
Spanning rural parishes and counties along ancient river networks and coastal lowlands, the Soulful South was politically split nearly 50-50 in 2012. By 2024, however, the Republican vote share surged to 58%, driven by declining Democratic turnout and growing disaffection among black voters.
“Partisanship shifted from near parity to a whopping 16-point Republican advantage in 2024,” said Valdiviez. “Top that off with dramatic plummets in Democratic turnout of over 27% in the last 12 years, and you see how this shift reflects a broader rejection of Democratic complacency, especially among working class black voters here.”
Though black voters here are migrating away from Democrats, their disaffection has a water’s edge. The Soulful South is also one of the regions we analyzed that has a positive view of the country’s direction, in part due to their disproportionate approval of Trump, which is five points higher in contrast to their general sentiments towards the Republican Party. Therein lies the rub for Republicans in a post-Trump era.
But even with Trump’s recent imposition and subsequent rollback of widespread tariffs, the same groups with a high blend of ethnicities or Democratic tendencies throughout our analysis, the Soulful South was one of the few where a majority (+9) either supported tariffs outright or trusted Trump on the issue.
Unlike their Rust Belt counterparts, for example — many of whom migrated north during two historic waves of the Great Migration (1910s–1970s) — black voters in the Soulful South remain deeply rooted in religion and legacy agrarian culture. These cultural differences forged a unique political identity, one increasingly aligned with conservative values and economic pragmatism.
The Tex-Mex Nexus
In the Tex-Mex Nexus, we see a different story playing out — but one that still offers opportunities for Republicans.
These areas are concentrated mostly in Texas, with density in the Rio Grande Valley and along the northern portion of its border with Mexico. Also included are pockets around the Lone Star State’s biggest cities and university towns. This is an interesting region, in that urban areas and university-centric towns align so closely with large swaths of the border areas.
Voters in this region are less Hispanic and more Tejano. These individuals identify as Texans of Mexican descent and are shaped by the state’s unique history. Together, these factors contribute to a cultural identity distinct from the broader “Hispanic” label, which encompasses people from various Latin American backgrounds.
leading to a different cultural identity. It’s for this reason we haven’t seen the same huge shifts toward Trump that we saw in California Hispanics and Latinos nationwide in 2024. Though the Tex-Mex Nexus has been shifting leftward since 2012, the cultural identity which blends Southern and Tejano, has the highest percentage of registered Democratic voters (D-51, R-39). It saw the second-largest swing toward Republicans in 2024, moving nine points to the right, narrowing the Democratic advantage to only six points.
Though voters here still lean toward Democrats, the Tejano identity prioritizes economic pragmatism over progressive messaging and endless culture war breakouts — giving Republicans more runway in the future. Furthermore, 27% of this bloc is Catholic, and the Democratic Party’s habitual promotion of policies and values in direct opposition to Catholics fuels this departure.
The Tex-Mex Nexus once looked like a prime target for Democrats hoping to forge a path to victory in Texas. Now, it’s hard to see how Democrats have any opportunity here — if anything they’ll keep losing more.
A successful model of engaging and communicating with the Tex-Mex Nexus, like that of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, helps prove the normal election-cycle pandering from Democrats is an old song and dance. That’s why so many of the younger voters in these areas are less attached to the party of their grandparents and more willing to entertain conservative approaches to their key issues — job opportunities, economic stability, and lower costs of living.
Unpacking the intricacies of minority voters in the Soulful South and the Tex-Mex Nexus, combined with the analysis in this series, allows us to safely declare the end of the “demographics is destiny” era that Democrats claimed was their path to permanent majorities. It could now more easily be argued that demographics favor Republicans, with these two regions providing proof.
The South’s minority voters are rewriting the political playbook, proving that economic realities and cultural values increasingly outweigh traditional partisan loyalties. For Republicans, the opportunity to build a durable multiracial coalition is within reach — but only if they invest in meaningful, year-round engagement that addresses the issues voters care about most.
The Democratic Party, meanwhile, faces an uphill battle to rebuild trust and reverse the erosion of its once-reliable strongholds. The stakes couldn’t be higher as the South continues to grow in population, influence, and political importance.
COMING UP NEXT: In part three, we’ll drill down into the stagnant suburbs of the American South, where their inelasticity poses significant challenges to both Republicans and Democrats.
