Tuesday’s election demonstrated the true power of people of color.

If enough of us say, “Enough,” your political ambitions could be over.

That was the reality across the United States today as Americans woke up to a reshaped electorate. And the people who did the bulk of that reshaping? 

Black women and Latinos. 

A win eight years in the making

From the ground laid by Democrat Stacey Abrams in 2018 and 2022 when she lost her historic bids for governor of Georgia, to Angie Nixon nearly pulling off the impossible in Florida’s U.S. Senate race last night, to paraphrase singer/songwriters Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin, sisters did it for themselves.

Nowhere was this more apparent than with the winning gubernatorial campaign of Keisha Lance Bottoms, finishing what Abrams started.

“Keisha Lance Bottoms brought out voters on her own, of people who were out there casting a ballot for her, and she beat an onslaught of money and cash. And so, for all the folks that said, it’s going to be Jon Ossoff that pulls Keisha Lance Bottoms over the finish line — She took herself over that finish line,” said host and political strategist Symone Sanders Townsend on MS NOW Tuesday night.

As reported by Mediate, Sanders added: “After the 2024 presidential election, I myself, but Black women all over this country — it felt like a repudiation of us. The fact that in North Carolina, for example, in 2024, every Democrat that was on the ballot statewide won, except Kamala Harris. I’m like, ‘Well, what is this?’ So there were there were Black women, myself included, that felt like, well, maybe America just does not want us. And Keisha Lance Bottoms went out there. And to be clear, when she was on the campaign trail, she went out there in some box braids this summer, and I was like, ‘Look at the mayor and her box braids! I don’t know if this is gonna help us win it.” And she has won. She won. Going out there, being herself, talking about the issue, connecting with the people. And, you know, for the 92% out there that was feeling like, ‘Oh, maybe, the country just doesn’t want us.” 

“Georgia wanted Keisha,’” she said.

‘Trust Black women’

A whopping 93% of Black women came out to support Democratic candidates across America, sparking the Blue Tsunami that engulfed the electorate. Black women were written off by this administration, which forced hundreds of thousands of them out of the workforce through DOGE purges and its destruction of diversity, equity, and inclusion. But while they could remove us from the workplace, they could not deny our power in politics. Tuesday night, four Black Democrats were elected governors, including Wisconsin, Nevada, Maryland, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A fifth Black governor, a Republican, was elected in Florida.

With pride, today I wore my “Trust Black Women” baseball cap in Brooklyn as I ran errands. The amount of head nods and smiles I received was incredible. 

A Black man at the laundromat immediately pointed out my hat and said how Nixon “could have used that last night,” referencing her close U.S. Senate race in Florida. 

“She could have won if she’d received more support,” I said, referring to the Democratic Party, which wrote off Nixon’s ambitions long before Tuesday when the “Blunami” hit and swept Dems by the dozens into power across America. 

The wave came up just short for Nixon, who lost by 3%, but it’s still going throughout the South and West Coast. Mississippi is still in play, and they haven’t elected a Black person to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. And Bottoms made history as the first Black woman to become governor of a U.S. state. She’s also the first Black person, first woman, first Black woman, and first former Atlanta mayor to become Georgia’s governor.

The Black vote helped tip the scales across the South, causing Democratic wins in so-called “safe,” gerrymandered Republican districts in North Carolina, Florida, and Texas. 

But Black voters weren’t alone.

Don’t mess with Texas

The GOP thought it was slick to redraw Texas’ districts shortly after the Supreme Court struck down crucial provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Usually maps are only redrawn after the census, but President Trump saw what he thought was a path to permanent Republican rule in Texas. 

There was only one problem. 

The maps were based on a significant percentage of Latino voters supporting Trump, and the signature policy Trump ran on was running up the deportation numbers across America. He said ICE would only go after the “worst of the worst,” but Latinos in Texas quickly realized they were all targets, regardless of status.

As a result, Trump’s popularity cratered.

“Election returns and exit polls suggest that Latino voters in many parts of the country, especially in Texas, shifted towards Democratic candidates, with early analysis suggesting this was one of the larger shifts among voters, and one of the important stories of 2026,” said Pew Research Center’s Director of Race and Ethnicity Research, Mark Lopez. 

While Lopez couldn’t confirm whether the shift was from Latinos changing their preferences, Latino voting patterns clearly changed.

Overall, 58% of Latino men and 68% of Latino women voted for Democrats nationwide.

In fact, the only groups Republicans led in exit polling were white men (53%) and white voters with no college degree (60%), showing the Democrats’ real strength remains in their diversity.

Let’s never let them forget that.

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