In a move that could solidify GOP power in the state for years to come, North Carolina Republicans passed new congressional and state legislative maps Wednesday that could flip three or four U.S. House seats while easing a path for the party to hold onto veto-proof majorities over state legislation.
Critics of the map say it weakens democracy by limiting the power of Black and Brown voters and crafting districts into GOP strongholds that curb Democratic voters’ influence.
“North Carolina is now one the most egregiously gerrymandered states in the country,” said Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general and current head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
Proponents say they are allowed to draw maps that favor political parties because of recent court precedent, and that Republicans have the power to do so because they won more seats in both chambers.
“The chickens are coming home to roost for the Democrats,” said Paul Shumaker, a senior Republican consultant in North Carolina. “Elections have consequences.”
The Republican redistricting of North Carolina is the party’s latest attempt to redefine congressional voting districts nationwide as cases across the South, including in Alabama and South Carolina, face legal challenges.
The newly-enacted districts come almost a year after the state Supreme Court flipped from Democratic to Republican control in the 2022 elections, and GOP justices ruled in April that redistricting for partisan gain was constitutional under state law. That decision reversed a ruling a year earlier from the state’s highest court that threw out proposed boundaries because of what it saw as illegal partisan gerrymandering.
The map creates 10 likely Republican districts, three likely Democratic districts and one that appears to be competitive, according to statewide election data.
North Carolina’s 14 congressional seats are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans after a temporary map was created following the top court’s decision to throw out a Republican-proposed map. The new map would probably flip at least three of those seats to the GOP, which could also help give them control in a U.S. House where Republicans hold a narrow 221-212 majority.
The three- or four-seat swing is significant even for partisan gerrymanders, experts say, showing how court elections can significantly alter the direction of a state and, potentially, control of the U.S. House.
In an analysis of recent elections in North Carolina, Duke University mathematics professor Jonathan Mattingly, who studies the effects of gerrymandering, found that electoral outcomes under the Republican maps wouldn’t reflect voters’ changing preferences, even when Democrats overperform.
“If the opinion of the people changes sufficiently, who is elected should change,” Mattingly said. “These maps are nonresponsive. With them, the elections have no consequences. That’s not really democracy.”
Andrew Taylor, a N.C. State University political science professor and the director of the Free and Open Societies Project, said the North Carolina legislature has some of the most leeway of any in the country to enact new voting districts, though it is subject to existing federal law. Taylor, who has previously served as an expert witness for Republicans, said he expects legal challenges to follow the bill’s passage.
Experts across North Carolina agree that legal challenges will be forthcoming, alleging that the redistricted maps are racially gerrymandered and unlawful under the Voting Rights Act because they don’t allow Black voters to fairly elect their representatives.
Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist in the state, said he think there’s likely a viable path to challenge the new map on the grounds that it dilutes the Black vote after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Alabama’s new congressional map was unconstitutional for that reason. That’s in addition to the aggressive gerrymander he says will limit Democratic voters’ influence statewide.
“They’ve taken essentially a 50-50 state and drawn a map where 80 percent of voters will have a Republican member of Congress,” said Jackson, the Democratic Party strategist.
Some advocates and organizations in North Carolina have started analyzing the maps for possible pathways to file lawsuits.
That includes Hilary Klein from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, who wrote in a letter to state GOP leaders that the state Senate legislative districts effectively dilute the Black vote in at least two seats.
“It is clear as day,” Klein said. “Anybody who knows anything about North Carolina knows the Senate map is going to deprive North Carolina’s Black Belt of any representation.”
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