"Curses" are not a substitute for political analysis.
Look at places like suburban Wake County and south central Charlotte, and most of rural eastern NC can't drop for the Democrats much further anyway because it has a significant black population. It's like a slower Georgia trend...really it just takes a small shove for it to go to Tilt D.
The seat which prevented a supermajority in the house was a seat which Democrats flipped in the Concord area.
Assuming the new state supreme court goes back to a hands-off approach, how difficult would it be for NC R's to draw a supermajority map?
I’m not sure if Republicans can redraw the legislature mid decade like they can for the congressional map (which was clearly stated as a 2022 only map).
The area there is a bit gray but I think the conservative majority finds some way to allow them to redraw the map.
The state Senate map as is is a slight R gerrymander that seems like it'll be hard for Ds to crack. Trump won 28 of 50 districts and Rs won 30 in 2022. The issue is that almost all the swing seats Ds need are in areas where shifts are brutal, like around the Lumbee tribe or the depopulating black belt. The only seat with favorable shifts is the Carrabus seat; everything else is pretty R.
On the state House level, again, topline the map actually seems pretty fair at 61 Trump to 59 Biden, but a ton of those Biden seats are extremely narrow, and there are at least 6 I can count that look like they won't be D during the latter part of the decade. And again, on the flip side, there aren't a ton of great suburban flip opportunities for Ds.
In NC, I see Dems becoming an almost high turnout urban-exclusive party which creates a simillar problem for them as WI where even a "fair" map makes it very hard for them to win a majority.
Maybe the conservative court allows them to redraw the legislature map, but I’m not sure if now a gubernatorial veto may be in play since it’s not done in the census year AND not court ordered (like the congressional one and the 2019 legislative ones). Dems should certainly argue this if it comes to that.
