2027 is the South's Next Big Shot to Fight Back Against Jim Crow 2.0

Oct 15

Key Takeaways: Virginia, Louisiana, and Mississippi all hold major elections in 2027 — their full state legislatures, and governor's races in Louisiana and Mississippi. Despite new voting restrictions and redistricting attacks across the South, all three states have shown real Democratic and progressive gains in just the last two years, and 2027 is the next chance to build on that. The South is not red, it’s oppressed.

First, a quick refresher

If you haven't already, read our breakdown of Jim Crow 2.0.

In short, Southern Republicans are redrawing maps to erase Black representation and rewriting voting laws to make it harder to cast a ballot. It's the same old project — protect conservative political power by shrinking who gets to vote — just with a modern paint job.

The people running that playbook want you to believe the South is a lost cause. It isn't. And 2027 is going to prove it.

What's actually on the ballot in 2027?

Three states, three different fights, one shared deadline:

Virginia: All 100 House of Delegates seats and all 40 State Senate seats are up. No governor's race this time, since Virginia just elected one in 2025.
Louisiana: Governor, lieutenant governor, and the full legislature are on the ballot.
Mississippi: Governor, lieutenant governor, and the full legislature are on the ballot too.

That's a lot of power up for grabs in states MAGA has banked on winning automatically, thanks to years of quietly shutting people out of the democratic process.

Virginia already showed everyone what's possible

Let's start with the easy one, because Virginia just handed us a receipt. In November 2025, Abigail Spanberger won the governor's race by a 15-point landslide, becoming the state's first woman governor. Ghazala Hashmi and Jay Jones won lieutenant governor and attorney general too, giving Democrats a full executive trifecta.

Down-ballot, it was even bigger. Democrats grew their House of Delegates majority from a shaky 51-49 to a commanding 64-36 — the party's largest majority in the chamber in almost 40 years. That kind of margin doesn't happen by accident. It happens because people organized, showed up, and refused to buy the "Virginia is a toss-up" narrative.

Virginia's 2027 job is different from 2025's: hold the line, keep expanding the bench, and use that Senate majority up for grabs to lock in a governing majority that can actually pass things like the voting rights and reproductive rights protections Democrats are already teeing up.

Louisiana is not the lost cause Republicans want you to believe

Louisiana still has a Republican trifecta and supermajorities in both legislative chambers. That part's real. But "still Republican" isn't the same thing as "no momentum," and the turnout numbers back that up.

In March 2025, Louisiana held a statewide election on four constitutional amendments — exactly the kind of low-attention, off-year race Republicans count on to stay quiet. Instead, Democratic turnout jumped by more than 100,000 voters compared to the last comparable election in 2021, while Republican turnout grew by less than half that. Black voter turnout more than doubled over the same stretch, from about 13% to 27%. That's not a fluke. That's a trend building toward 2027.

Alexandria — the seat of Rapides Parish, a parish Trump carried by double digits in 2024 — has been led by Democratic mayor Jacques Roy since he won it back in 2022 and Natchitoches re-elected Democratic mayor Ronnie Williams Jr. to a second term in 2024.

That trend showed up again in October 2025, when New Orleans elected Helena Moreno as mayor with a decisive win in the first round, no runoff needed, as part of a broader wave of Democratic city leaders winning their races the same night.

2027 hands Democrats their biggest opening yet: Governor Jeff Landry is term-limited, the seat is open, and Democratic state senator Jay Luneau is already being floated as a potential candidate. An open governor's race, stacked on top of two straight years of rising Democratic turnout, is not nothing.

Mississippi just broke a Republican supermajority. Yes, really.

Here's the one people sleep on the most, and it's honestly the best headline of the bunch. In November 2025, Mississippi Democrats flipped three legislative seats in special elections — two in the State Senate and one in the House — and broke the Republican supermajority in the Senate for the first time in over a decade.

Those seats exist because the NAACP (not the Democratic Party) sued the state in 2022, arguing its maps diluted Black voting power. Alongside the ACLU of Mississippi and the Mississippi Center for Justice, they spent two years building that case and won.

Ultimately, Democrats didn't just win the new districts; they won them big, including a 63% landslide in Senate District 2 and a blowout win for former Hattiesburg mayor Johnny DuPree in Senate District 45. The state Democratic Party called it proof that Mississippi is "no longer a foregone conclusion." They're not wrong.

Jackson also elected a new mayor in 2025, longtime state senator John Horhn, with over 67% of the vote in the general election. It's a changing of the guard in the state's capital and largest city, and it's exactly the kind of bench-building that pays off down the road.

Mississippi's governor and full legislature are on the ballot in 2027. The supermajority is already cracked. The question is whether 2027 turns that crack into something bigger.

So what would a real win look like in 2027?

Nobody's promising a blue Louisiana or Mississippi by New Year's 2028. That's not how this works, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But here's what real, meaningful progress looks like:

Breaking or shrinking supermajorities further in Louisiana and Mississippi, which limits Republicans' ability to override vetoes and ram through constitutional amendments without a single Democratic vote.
Competitive, well-funded governor's races in two states where the sitting Republican governor can't run again, which is the single biggest opening either state has had in years.
Locking in Virginia's gains by holding the House and expanding their seats in the Senate firmly enough to pass voting rights protections without relying on a razor-thin margin.
Building the bench. Every state senator, mayor, and city council member elected in these cycles is a future statewide candidate. Helena Moreno, John Horhn, and Johnny DuPree didn't appear out of nowhere — they came up through exactly this kind of local and legislative pipeline.

How you can help, even if you don't live anywhere near the South

You don't need to live in Richmond, Baton Rouge, or Jackson to make a real difference in these races. Campaigns in all three states rely on remote volunteers for the unglamorous work that actually wins elections:

Phone banking to reach voters who need a reminder about early voting, registration deadlines, or where their polling place is.
Text banking to do the same thing at scale, especially with younger and first-time voters who respond better to texts than calls.
Postcard writing for get-out-the-vote and voter registration drives, which studies have consistently shown boosts turnout in close races.
Donating, if you've got the means and not the time. Mississippi is proof that this fight isn't only won by campaigns and parties — the state and local Democratic parties in Virginia, Louisiana, and Mississippi need funding, but so do the NAACP chapters, Planned Parenthood affiliates, and faith-based organizing groups like Faith in Action that are doing the on-the-ground legal and community work making these wins possible in the first place.

None of these require you to be an expert, live locally, or even have a ton of free time. They require you to show up. Follow campaigns, state Democratic parties, and organizations working in Virginia, Louisiana, and Mississippi to find sign-up links as 2027 gets closer — and if your workplace or organization runs phone banks or text programs, that's a great place to start now.

History doesn't move in a straight line, and neither does this fight. But every single one of these states just proved that the pushback is already working. 2027 is the next round. Let's not sit it out.