Probably Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Though I wonder if, in a modern context, inland vs. coastal would be a more meaningful divide of the south.
Only if you're talking about the national red/blue divide. There's still plenty of differences in demographics, ancestry, dialect, and culture between Eastern Tennessee and the Mississippi Delta to justify a "Deep South" vs. "Upper South" division.
To answer the question I would define the contemporary "Deep South" as something like the following:
So basically you have the Arkansas Delta, the Louisiana Delta + Baton Rouge/North Shore, all of Mississippi except the extreme northeastern portion (Tupelo), extreme southwestern Tennessee (Memphis), Alabama south of Birmingham/I-20, Georgia (except for Metro Atlanta and North Georgia), Lowland and central South Carolina, heavily Black counties in southeastern North Carolina, and the Florida panhandle.
^I pretty much agree with the definition in this map, and so excluded LA. But other than that I'm pretty much with the consensus here.
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