Current Representative vacant Median income 44,685 | Population (2015) 678,910 Cook PVI R+9 | |
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Ethnicity 66.7% White
28.6% Black
1.1% Asian
1.6% Hispanic
0.4% Native American
1.2% other | ||
The 5th Congressional District of South Carolina is a congressional district in northern South Carolina bordering North Carolina. From 2003 to 2013 it included all of Cherokee, Chester, Chesterfield, Darlington, Dillon, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lancaster, Marlboro, Newberry and York counties and parts of Florence, Lee and Sumter counties. Outside the rapidly growing city of Rock Hill, the district is mostly rural and agricultural. The district borders were contracted from some of the easternmost counties in the 2012 redistricting.
The district's character is very similar to other mostly rural districts in the South. Democrats still hold most offices outside Republican-dominated York County. However, few of the area's Democrats can be described as liberal by national standards; most are fairly conservative on social issues, but less so on economics. The largest blocs of Republican voters are in the fast-growing suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina and Cherokee County, which shares the Republican tilt of most of the rest of the Upstate.
In November 2010, the Republican Mick Mulvaney defeated longtime Congressman John Spratt and became the first Republican since Robert Smalls and the end of Reconstruction to represent the district. Following Mulvaney's confirmation as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, a special election will be held in 2017 to determine his successor.