North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[Sol]

The state legislature is worth keeping an eye on here too; the Congressional map is fairly predictable but the state legislative map less so.

Under current interpretations of NC state law, the legislature is required to minimize county splits to the maximum degree possible, a rule which sometimes results in kind of awkward districts but which severely constrains gerrymandering. If the legislature colors within these lines, the maps will be certainly gerrymandered (especially in the House) but Democrats would likely still be within striking distance of breaking the supermajority in a good year, even if it's a bit harder.

However, given the current Republican majority in the State Supreme Court, it seems likely to me that they may jettison these rules and draw freely with the understanding that the court would back them up. In that case, it would lock in a Republican supermajority with 100% certainty for the rest of the decade.

[Sol]

The state legislature is worth keeping an eye on here too; the Congressional map is fairly predictable but the state legislative map less so.

Under current interpretations of NC state law, the legislature is required to minimize county splits to the maximum degree possible, a rule which sometimes results in kind of awkward districts but which severely constrains gerrymandering. If the legislature colors within these lines, the maps will be certainly gerrymandered (especially in the House) but Democrats would likely still be within striking distance of breaking the supermajority in a good year, even if it's a bit harder.

However, given the current Republican majority in the State Supreme Court, it seems likely to me that they may jettison these rules and draw freely with the understanding that the court would back them up. In that case, it would lock in a Republican supermajority with 100% certainty for the rest of the decade.

I could see Republicans shore up the seats they currently have and concede the ones they don’t to Democrats, with a few exceptions (the Cabarrus County D seat, for instance).

In the senate the toughest think to do is shore up the New Hanover senate seat. The only competitive D-held seat, the one partially in Wake can’t be made much redder than it currently is.

The challenge with that approach is that there's kind of a push and pull with it. Cabarrus is a good example; you can draw it so that Diamond Staton-Williams's district becomes Republican, but there are a lot of 55-45 R areas that mean you're probably just drawing two lean R seats instead of one tossup and one likely R seat.

In the House there's more room to rig--the GOP control of the NCSC means we probably get an Asheville pack, you can probably split Chatham and draw out Reives, boost R margins in suburban Guilford seats, maybe tighten lean D seats in Mecklenburg and Wake, etc. But that's only a few seats in practice, still enough for a Dem rebound since in most cases these seats are going to stay competitive-ish.

[Sol]

It's not that hard to tweak the current house map and get more republican seats. You can pick up one in Buncombe, one in Cabarrus, one in Cumberland, one using Caswell and Pierson counties and potentially one in Wake even though it is weak. Also they could try drawing out the minority leader and shoring up weaker seats in Almance and Forsyth. You can make 78 Budd seats: https://davesredistricting.org/join/901c3d69-36ff-4dcf-8870-7ebc7f0dfe46

This isn't in compliance with cluster rule fyi. That may be something Republicans do, but in that case you can gerrymander even more efficiently than that.

[Sol]

Anyone think there's a chance Rs go for smtg like 9-2-3 map, where they try to keep Greensboro whole, since before that was sort of the biggest liability in their gerrymander? You can keep Guilford County whole and still make a Biden + 1 seat that'd have a very good chance of electing an R. They could also just cede NC-06 to Dems, sort of like NC-2020 map.

Also, with Donalds being a strong incumbent and Milligan, will be interesting to see how the GOP handles NC-01. The current config is about as blue as the district can get without doing smtg weird. It's pretty easy to make into a tossup or even R-leaning seat, but Rs might not want to do that and risk a lawsuit, especially after seeing AL.

Also curious to see if they split Fayetteville down the middle. Their old gerrymander didn't and it was one of the weaker R districts on the map. My guess is they'll keep it whole again, to help avoid litigation and cause that region of NC has been getting redder so the seat should be fine long term. The current map cracks Fayetteville though which might give the GOP a permission structure of sorts.

NC-13 and NC-14 are the only 2 Dem seats I'm basically certain are eliminated..

I'm not as looped into NC politics these days, but I strongly doubt they keep NC-06. That's not their style, and chopping up the Triad is a relatively secure move relative to gerrymandering further east, which is more tenous.

I floated a map a while back on here which drew out Foushee instead of Manning; while that's an interesting hypothetical and actually doable-ish, there's no reason for them to do it unless the have a strong preference for Manning, which seems doubtful.

No idea what they do on NC-01.

[Sol]

I made a map of the State House under the county cluster rule to model what Republicans might do with a friendly court.

link



The tl;dr is that this only gets Republicans to 72 seats, with them having to compete in several D-swinging metro areas where Democrats have tended to overperform recently. Something like this is probably the best Republicans can get in the House, unless they decide to go out on a limb and draw illegally.

Some explanations:

Asheville:

Asheville is the first of a few areas where Republicans have to make tradeoffs. Under the cluster rule, Buncombe County can only have 3 seats. In the past few years, Asheville has been sliced up because of favorable court rulings, but since imo the reasoning is a bit spurious I suspect the newly R court will reverse that precedent and allow for a huge Democratic pack in Asheville. Outside of Asheville, the county is quite swingy, which means that you can draw two swing seats or one D and one R seat. I opted for the latter.

Charlotte:

Mecklenburg is a cluster to itself, while Cabarrus gets lumped in with some counties to the north. You can draw two very narrow Trump seats in Meck (the two purples), though both are quite close, especially the "save Tricia Cotham" seat in the SE.

Cabarrus is another example of these tradeoffs. All the seats in Cabarrus are quite robustly Republican, but given the swings in that part of the world it's possible it could be a dummymander. If I'm a Republican conceding a swing seat here might make more sense.

Eastern Triad

It feels like it should be possible for Republicans to wring an extra seat out of Guilford County, but it isn't really; there's a lot of Republican voters locked up in 60-40 precincts in NW Greensboro. Still Republicans get two Trump seats here, a boon since iirc Biden carried all the current seats in Guilford.

Alamance is a similar tradeoff to Cabarrus, where I've drawn two safe-ish R seats that could be very dicey in 2028.


Republicans wring an extra seat out of Wake (dark brown). Both it and light blue are likely R, on the edge of safe. I considered trading territory between blue and orange, since Fuquay-Varina has been swinging left while the more ruralish areas east of Holly Springs remain more Republican.

Chatham County is part of a huge cluster with a bunch of random Piedmont counties, which lets one draw out Robert Reives. Orange in northern Durham county is a lean D seat, albeit one which Democrats would probably never lose given patterns of institutional strength.

[Sol]

https://twitter.com/MichaelWNCN/status/1713996335555252701
I bet we'll see them tomorrow.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that we see them before Thursday (or Wednesday night when the Democrats on the committee get them.) That would be in keeping with how Republicans have operated this year.

[Sol]

Some takeaways:
-The two congressional maps look like sneaky attempts at 10-3; version 2 is theoretically 9-4 but that 1st district is clearly designed to ride the wave of Republican vote growth in that part of the state.
-The 4th district in Map 1 looks like it has some dummymander potential by the end of the decade, which is a bit inevitable if you try to draw out Foushee.
-Both versions have a "elect Tim Moore to Congress" seat, as expected.
-The State Senate map follows county clusters (good news!). However, they went with the rather VRA questionable version of the clusters in NE NC, which is not good.
-State Senate map draws out Democrat Natasha Marcus's house, which is a bit surprising because they cut a deal with her on it in 2020.
-SD-18 and SD-13 look like attempts to squeeze Republican seats out of Wake, and SD-42 is doing something similar in Meck.
-Added in a bill designed to give Republicans control of the Watauga County commission, lol
-No House map as of yet, unless I'm missing something. This will be the most ambitious and complciated gerrymander of all of them, most likely, so I'll keep a look out.

[Sol]

State House:
link

[Sol]

State House still quite aggressive but not as much as I expected; they don't draw out Reives.

[Sol]

Carolina forward has the maps in DRA.

link

[Sol]

Both those congressional maps are disgusting. You can make an equally effective 11-3 map that doesn’t have districts hyper-extending across large swaths of the state. There are just so many unnecessary weird pairings.

They're trying to minimize tail risk, which is why you get stuff like Wake to Carteret or the split of Fayetteville. Very much in the "TXGOP drawing a hideous gerrymander to scoop out Denton" school of map drawing.

[Sol]

Btw, didn't NC Democrats screw themselves sometime in the 90s or 2000s by taking away the governor's power to veto maps?

Not only did they do that, it was arranged by Roy Cooper.

[Sol]

Btw, didn't NC Democrats screw themselves sometime in the 90s or 2000s by taking away the governor's power to veto maps?

Not only did they do that, it was arranged by Roy Cooper.

Woof. These maps are disgusting and I don't support gerrymandering regardless of which party does it, but it's very hard for me to feel bad here.

They didn’t take away the veto power, it’s just when they added the power they explicitly made redistricting exempt.

That doesn't really make it any better; it was still intended as a little trick to weaken the other party, since North Carolina Republicans had managed to win governor's seats plenty of times in the late 20th century, but were seen as having no shot at winning the legislature. It's the same kind of stuff that NCGOP does now.

That doesn't mean that any party should be screwed over in this way, which is why I care a lot about this issue, but you can't deny that certain elements of NC Republican misrule are just photo negative versions of how NC Democrats used to govern.

[Sol]

Will be interesting to see if Wiley Nickel runs for reelection in the 2nd or the 4th, given his home seems to be close to the border between the two. Or if he decides to not run in either primary and opt for another course of action.

2nd is a better bet for him imo. Foushee is a Chapel Hill politician, so it's easy to imagine her dominating the primary in Orange (where she's part of a local political dynasty) and Chatham, which is already a pretty substantial chunk of the Democratic primary electorate. Plus she's a better fit for Durham, ideologically and culturally, and she's represented it already. Those places easily override the suburbs of Western Wake in a primary.

I think it'd be an uphill battle in NC-02 as well, but less steep than the alternative. IMO he probably bows out gracefully and plans on running for something else.

[Sol]

Yeah the big picture issue for NC Dems in the legislature is that a lot of their support is locked up in districts which are like 55-45 R, like much of the state east of Raleigh. Those places aren't winnable for the NC Democrats as presently constituted, especially since they've failed to win outright Biden-voting seats in this part of the state.

[Sol]

Here's the final State Senate map Rs passed. It breaks 31 Trump - 19 Biden.

Of the 19 seats only 3 are remotely competitive. 13 and 42 are both desperate attempts by Rs to cling on to suburban seats within Wake and Mecklenburg Counties respectively. Both districts have been shifting pretty hard left and should prolly be Dem long term. District 5 is Biden + 13 but only Beasley + 7 in 2022 and has generally been drifting right but for the most part think it should be ok for Dems.

There are several competative R seats. Both 11 and 24 are Clinton-Trump seats. Only way I can see Dems clinging onto 11 long term is if Franklin County starts seeing some liberal spillover from Wake. 24 really comes down to who has a candidate that can appeal to the Lumbee tribe. 18 takes in Northern Wake, is currently represented by a Dem overperformer, and is generally shifting left so Dems prolly hold it long term; was only Budd + 1 in 2022. Dems may also have a shot at SD-07 if they continue their gains in Wilmington and a longshot in the Trump + 10 Carrabus based seat. This basically locks Dems out of a majority for the decade, and difficult to break the R supermajority.

District 5 is notable in that it's the only place in Eastern NC outside of the coasts to have a non-negligible white liberal population as well.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a bit of leftward movement in Franklin County, though I may be being optimistic; there's been a lot of suburban growth along US-1 in Northern Wake County, which most recently flipped the area around Wake Forest. Youngsville is the next logical zone to see growth in this way. The adjacent part of Northern Wake may also get commuter rail in the medium term thanks to the S-line project, which is basically the only viable rail project happening in the Triangle these days, though that probably doesn't happen this decade.

18 is interesting; Mary Wills Bode will definitely have an uphill climb, but she's also fairly good recruit for Democrats in that her ~vibes~ are well to the right of her actual views (which to my understanding are actually even well to the left of her voting record), in a way which is a good fit for exurban Wake.

[Sol]

I'm not super optimistic that SD-07 will fall. It may flip to Democrats in a good year, as it did in 2018, but it's the sort of place where recent Dem gains have been due to erosion with higher-income white voters as opposed to demographic shifts. It seems like it has a lot of voters who would be Republican most of the time but flipped over in a 2020 one-off.

New Hanover County is the kind of place which seems like it should be much more Democratic than it is to the outside observer; despite being arguably the most urbanized of the group it's easily the most right wing major metro county in the state.

Lee is also a fairly strong and influential incumbent who generally tries to strike a moderate image, despite being in lockstep with the party; sort of the Brian Fitzpatrick of the State Senate. Actually this description applies to the New Hanover House delegation too.

[Sol]

New Hanover County is the kind of place which seems like it should be much more Democratic than it is to the outside observer; despite being arguably the most urbanized of the group it's easily the most right wing major metro county in the state.

This actually kind of gets to the heart of the matter of NC geography. There's been a lot of discourse about the "countrypolitan" counties of North Carolina and their importance to the future prospects of the NC Democratic party, but imo a lot of that comes from a category misunderstanding about them.

Since North Carolina only really has mid-sized cities, the lens of comparison for them is often larger cities, but that often confuses the issue, by making outer suburban and exurban counties seem comparable to inner suburban counties elsewhere. For example, people will say that Democrats should try to build up strength in Union County (which they should!), with the goal of flipping it. But this ignores the fact that very few places like Union County vote Democratic, basically none in the South. Union County is outer suburbia, going on exurbia; the relevant comparison is Cherokee or Coweta in Atlanta.

The Research Triangle is even more striking; Democrats in the past few years have been doing extremely well in far out areas of Wake County, winning precincts in places like Holly Springs or Fuquay-Varina; basically the equivalent of Democrats winning Forsyth County in Georgia in terms of urban structure. Biden even got decent numbers in Clayton in Johnston County.

It's also important to spell out: these communities have a lot of ideological right-wingers! It was very noticeable that most of the earliest CRT/anti-LGBT educational panic organizing was in places with these sorts of profiles: New Hanover County, Union County, Moore County (which is not part of a major MSA but is similar demographically).

Democrats should obviously try to improve their margins in places like these, and they may be buoyed up by growth and demographic change in certain cases--I'm thinking of Franklin, Alamance, Cabarrus, and NW Johnston in particular.

But I do think that psephologists place too much of an emphasis on winning over voters in in Republican suburban and exurban areas, at the expense of stopping the bleeding in rural Eastern NC, which is ultimately the big problem for Democrats in the state. The NC Democrats are already punching well above their weight in large metro areas!

[Sol]

North Carolina doesn’t really have a lot of people in the eastern part of the state, so they can easily offset that with urban and suburban growth.

I mean, this is just not true. On a fair map, there'd be around 3 districts in Eastern NC; if you include a district based in the Sandhills, which have similar dynamics, you'd get 4. That's like 20-30% of the state's population! Eastern NC may lack large metro centers, with the most sizable being Fayetteville and Wilmington, but the region has a bunch of small cities that add up--Rocky Mount, Goldsboro, Wilson, Greenville, Elizabeth City, etc. etc.
 
The kinds of places which I was discussing are a much smaller fraction of the state.