COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republicans will still run the South Carolina House when the General Assembly returns in January, but they will no longer have the two-thirds supermajority they built over the last two election cycles.
Democrats picked up 10 House seats in last week’s election Election Commission’s unofficial count. One of those races is headed to an automatic recount under state law, and a separate Republican-held seat in Simpsonville that was decided by 42 votes is also going to a recount.
The math is simple. The House has 124 members, so a supermajority takes at least 83 votes. Republicans crossed that line with the 2022 election, which left them with an 88-36 edge in the chamber. A 10-seat swing drops them below it.
In practice, the supermajority matters for a short list of things. Two-thirds votes are needed to put a constitutional amendment before voters and to override a governor’s veto. Most bills, including the state budget, still pass with a simple majority, which Republicans keep comfortably.
The losses reached the top of the House GOP. Micah Caskey, the majority leader and a House member for 10 years who was chosen as caucus leader in August, finished about 110 votes behind his Democratic challenger. Because he lost by under 1 percentage point, state law calls for an automatic recount, though he wrote in a public post that he did not expect the outcome to change.
Democrats had set out to win back six seats this year. Their gains included a rural district covering all of McCormick County and part of Greenwood County, a Lowcountry seat that had gone years without a competitive race, a Summerville seat and a Fort Mill seat held by a member of the House Freedom Caucus. Democrats did not lose any seats they already held.
Three other Lowcountry Republicans held on by fewer than 400 votes each, narrowly avoiding recounts of their own.
The state Democratic Party said the 10-seat gain was the biggest single net pickup it could find in modern history.
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