NPR's Stephen Fowler analyzes how the 2026 midterms made the South central to both parties' futures: Black voter turnout surged despite a Supreme Court ruling gutting part of the Voting Rights Act, Democrats flipped Senate seats in North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, and Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia's governorship as the nation's first Black woman governor. Fowler writes that Republican redistricting efforts in states like Texas, Florida and Alabama backfired, and that both parties' 2028 paths now run through Southern states that hold more than a third of the electoral votes needed for the White House.