with Facing South

While Democrats defied historical trends in the 2022 midterm elections by blocking the Republican "red wave" that many pundits predicted would overtake the U.S. Congress, last year's election resulted in significant GOP gains in Southern state legislatures, bolstering their control of the region's politics. Republicans gained about 55 legislative seats in Southern states in 2022 and now hold majorities in all of the region's legislative chambers except for the Virginia Senate.

Benjamin Barber is the Democracy Program Coordinator at the Institute for Southern Studies, a contributing writer for Facing South, and a graduate of the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a bachelor's degree in history from Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina. Benjamin previously interned with the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama and with Facing South, and he served as the historian for the North Carolina NAACP Youth and College Division.