South Carolina elections in 2026
9 electoral votes · 7 House seats · South · 2 statewide races on the 2026 ballot
South Carolina US Senate: D 42.0 to R 58.0, safe Republican, well sourced. Republican Darline Graham holds strong lead in South Carolina Senate race
South Carolina Governor: D 42.0 to R 54.0, likely Republican, well sourced. Alan Wilson heavily favored in South Carolina open-seat contest
House delegation as simulated: 1 D, 6 R, 0 tossups of 7 districts swept.
Model readings of live reporting, not polling. The full South Carolina board, with sourcing and the county map where one exists, is on the Midterms 2026 tab of the homepage.
How South Carolina votes
South Carolina pairs a fast-growing coast with a conservative upstate and a substantial Black electorate that anchors the Democratic coalition. Republicans hold a firm statewide advantage in federal races.
Its largest population centers include Charleston, Columbia, Greenville. Where a state's people live, and what those places do for a living, is the starting point for how Electorate HQ simulations reason about it.
On the ballot in South Carolina
Election day is November 3, 2026. South Carolina has 2 statewide races and 7 House seats on the ballot.
Statewide races
House districts
Every House seat is elected every two years. Each district below is listed with the counties inside it, computed from the current Census boundary files, wherever those files give a clean answer. Not sure which district is yours? Use the address lookup below.
- South Carolina 1st district: Beaufort, Berkeley Counties
- South Carolina 2nd district: Aiken, Barnwell, Lexington, Richland Counties
- South Carolina 3rd district: Abbeville, Anderson, Edgefield, Greenwood, Laurens, McCormick, Newberry, Oconee and 2 more counties (10 in all)
- South Carolina 4th district: Greenville, Spartanburg Counties
- South Carolina 5th district: Cherokee, Chester, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lancaster, Lee, Sumter, Union and 1 more counties (9 in all)
- South Carolina 6th district: Allendale, Bamberg, Calhoun, Charleston, Clarendon, Colleton, Dorchester, Hampton and 3 more counties (11 in all)
- South Carolina 7th district: Chesterfield, Darlington, Dillon, Florence, Georgetown, Horry, Marion, Marlboro Counties
Find your exact districts
Your address goes to the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder to find your districts. It is not stored, and no AI sees it.
Which district am I in? South Carolina districts by county
House districts follow population, not county lines, so a single county can hold several districts and a single district can span many. Each county is listed under the district that holds its center, so if your county appears once above, that district holds most of it and is probably yours. If it appears under several, or if you live near a district line, use the address lookup for the exact answer.
Before you vote in South Carolina
Registration deadlines, early voting windows, mail ballot rules and identification requirements are all set at the state level and change between cycles, so the authoritative source is your own election office rather than any national site. The federal directory at vote.gov links to every state's registration system, and your county election office publishes the sample ballot that includes local contests.
The ballot section above covers the federal and statewide offices on the South Carolina ballot for November 3, 2026. Each statewide race links to a page with current coverage and an AI-generated simulation of the contest, always labeled as a simulation rather than a poll.
Local races
Local councils and commissions, school boards, judges, sheriffs and municipal offices are also on many South Carolina ballots, and they vary block by block. Your county election office publishes the authoritative local sample ballot.
South Carolina's weight in Washington
South Carolina carries 9 electoral votes, which ranks it 24 of 51 by that measure, and sends 7 voting members to the House.
That arithmetic is why the same national argument lands differently here than in a state of another size: a candidate courting South Carolina is competing for a specific share of the map, and the issues below are the ones that share actually turns on.
How South Carolina is represented
South Carolina is divided into 7 House districts, each drawn to hold roughly the same number of people, while its two Senate seats represent the state as a whole. A campaign here therefore runs two different arguments at once: a local one shaped by whichever district a voter lives in, and a statewide one that has to hold together across all 7.
Electoral votes follow the same arithmetic, House seats plus two, which is why South Carolina carries 9 in a presidential year and why small states carry proportionally more weight there than population alone would give them. The district list above shows every district on the 2026 ballot and the counties the boundary files place inside each one.
Latest South Carolina political headlines
South Carolina ETV and Public Radio to host, broadcast and livestream "South Carolina Election 2026" U.S. Senate debateSC is a reliably GOP state. Why Andrews, Johnson argue they have path to victoryACLU-SC v. State Election Commission (FOIA)Trump seeks to bolster Darline Graham's Senate bid at South Carolina rallyVoter registration deadlines approach in South Carolina midterm electionSouth Carolina voter registration deadlines approaching ahead of Nov. 3 electionSC Election Commission violated open meetings law, ACLU allegesHow are public schools in South Carolina funded?Simulate South Carolina
In the Electorate HQ simulator, South Carolina is one of 51 delegations that reads current reporting and decides a presidential race issue by issue. Results are AI simulations, clearly labeled, with the reasoning shown for every call. See the methodology for what that does and does not mean.
Analysis covering South Carolina
Alabama has the most evenly sized congressional map in the country
Every redistricting argument is about the extremes. Here is the opposite: the state whose seven districts land within a factor of three of each other.
Twenty-six states elect a senator and a governor on the same day in 2026
The overlap between the Senate class and the gubernatorial cohort is a coincidence of two unrelated calendars, and it decides where money goes.
The 2026 Senate map covers 62% of the country and 70% of the states
Thirty-five of fifty states vote for Senate this year. Weighted by people rather than states the share drops, and that gap is the design of the chamber.