co-authored by Chris Kirkwood
North Carolina has been subject to extreme partisan gerrymandering by the Republican Party since 2010, resulting in a great deal of litigation. In 2019, two particularly important court decisions regarding North Carolina were published.
One, from the US Supreme Court, ruled that federal courts could not overturn a gerrymander on the basis of partisanship. Not only would the federal Congressional districts in North Carolina stay in place, but this was also a major setback to those fighting for fairer maps across the entire country.
The other, from the Superior Court of Wake County, struck down North Carolina’s state Senate and state House districts based on the state constitution, and mandated that they be redrawn under supervision of the court. This was a reversal; in 2018, Democrats won the majority of the statewide vote but Republicans kept control of both chambers. Despite the new maps, the state-level results were mixed in 2020, and Republicans retained control of the legislature, and therefore the redistricting process.
Thus the most likely result on the federal House level is some kind of Republican gerrymander. @bluearrowMaps shows us what that might look like here:
The North Carolina House delegation is currently 8 Republicans and 5 Democrats. However, North Carolina’s population growth as measured by the 2020 Census led the state to gain an additional seat in the US House. The result is a 9-5 map, a net Republican gain of +1 seat.
Democratic North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper cannot veto the maps drawn by the legislature, so the Democrats have little leverage, but a remote possibility is a more balanced map. This 7-3-4 map may better represent the state, which has had a 4% or less margin of victory for the past four presidential cycles:
In a hypothetical world where Democrats controlled the legislature and were gunning for the maximum number of seats, they could pursue a setup like this 5-4-5 map (with all of the 4 competitive seats tilted toward them!):
