Democrats just turned in a massive overperformance in a majority-Black district

24-year-old minister Keishan Scott will become one of the youngest lawmakers in the nation

South Carolina Democrat Keishan Scott (credit: Keishan Scott Facebook)

Democrat Keishan Scott, a 24-year-old minister and local elected official, won Tuesday's special election for the South Carolina House in a 71-29 landslide, turning in one of the largest overperformances of the year.

"I'm humbled by the trust the people of District 50 have placed in me," Scott said in a statement. "This victory belongs to everyone who believes in a better future for our communities. Now I'm ready to get to work for the people of Lee, Sumter, and Kershaw Counties."

Scott's 41-point victory over Republican Bill Oden represented a huge improvement on Kamala Harris' narrow 51-46 margin in the 50th District, a largely rural constituency based in the Midlands in the central part of the state. It also suggested Democrats might have arrested and even reversed the rightward shift in the district, which had voted for Joe Biden by a 57-42 spread in 2020.

What's more, the contest was the first legislative special election this year to take place in a district with a large Black population: According to Dave's Redistricting App, 51% of the voting-age population is African American, while 44% is white.

The win makes Scott one of the youngest state lawmakers in the nation, though Democrats remain deep in the minority in the South Carolina House, with Republicans holding an 88-36 supermajority following Tuesday's election.

But across the country, Democratic candidates have been turning in exceptionally strong showings in special elections this year—Scott's included. In beating the 2024 presidential numbers by 36 points, Scott racked up the second-biggest overperformance by a Democrat anywhere, behind only New York's Sam Sutton two weeks ago.

As a result, across 23 such races tracked by The Downballot, Democrats are now running more than 16 points ahead of the top of the ticket on average in 2025. And even without Sutton's outlier win, that figure stands at more than 13 points. By comparison, leading up to Donald Trump's first midterms in 2018, Democrats had outperformed in special elections by an average of 10.6 points.