Democrats’ Deep Hole

State Sen. Ralph Hise didn’t hide Republicans’ reasons for overhauling the state’s congressional map on Monday morning. 

“The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular: Draw a new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to the North Carolina congressional delegation,” Hise said, introducing the bill to the Senate’s elections committee. Hise drew the map and was its sole defender at the hearing. 

“Republicans hold a razor-thin margin in the United States House of Representatives, and if Democrats flip four seats in the upcoming midterm elections, they will take control of the House and torpedo President Trump’s agenda,” he said.  

The current map contains 10 safe Republican seats, three safe Democratic seats, and one swing district held by a Democrat. The new map turns the battleground 1st District, in Eastern North Carolina, red. It passed the Senate on Monday evening on a party-line vote—after Republicans cleared the gallery amid chants of “Cheaters!”—and will likely be approved by the House by Wednesday morning. Gov. Josh Stein cannot veto redistricting legislation. 

Assuming courts don’t intervene, the state’s 2020, 2022, 2024, and 2026 congressional contests will have taken place under different maps. 

Democratic Sen. Gladys Robinson of Guilford County asked Hise how many of the districts were competitive under the new map. 

“Wherever you set the standards at competitive—if it’s at 56, 57 percent—does that make it a competitive district?” Hise replied. “Then the answer is up to 11 districts that are competitive within the system. If you draw that number to 51, then none of the districts will be considered competitive.” 

In other words, none of the districts has a close partisan split. But Hise was suggesting that, while the three urban Democratic districts are overwhelmingly blue—a gerrymandering tactic known as “packing”—the 11 GOP districts will be somewhat competitive because candidates don’t usually get more than 57 percent of the vote.

That’s not quite accurate. Trump would have earned at least 58 percent of the vote in three of the 11 GOP-leaning districts in 2024, had they been in place at the time, according to a legislative analysis. (Trump won 51 percent of the vote in North Carolina last year, beating then-Vice President Kamala Harris by 3.2 points.)

But Hise’s answer also undersells this reality: Absent a political earthquake, none of the new districts are competitive, based on The Assembly’s analysis of election data.      

The analysis assessed each new district’s partisan lean by averaging the margins of victory of the presidential contests in 2024 and 2020 and the U.S. Senate race in 2022 within the districts’ boundaries. 

It found that the three blue districts—centered in Durham, Raleigh, and Charlotte—have Democratic advantages of 38 to 48 points, making it all but impossible for Republicans to win them. The 11 GOP districts, meanwhile, have advantages ranging from 9.7 points to 19 points. (The state has a Republican lean of about 2.6 points.) 

Though smaller, those margins are also nearly insurmountable for Democrats. 

Michael Bitzer, a professor of political science at Catawba College and author of Redistricting and Gerrymandering in North Carolina: Battlelines in the Tar Heel State, told The Assembly last week that seats are considered safe, no matter the political headwinds, with a 10-point partisan advantage. 

For Democrats to compete in any of the new 11 GOP-leaning North Carolina districts, the national mood would have to resemble 2018, Trump’s first midterm election. 

That year, Democratic candidates for the U.S. House won the cumulative national vote by 8.6 points. Replicating their performance in 2026 would mean an 11.1-point swing from 2024, when Republicans won the U.S. House national vote by 2.5 points. 

The cumulative congressional vote isn’t evenly distributed across the country, however, and it’s far from certain that a big Democratic night nationally would trickle down to North Carolina. During 2018’s blue wave, a majority of the state’s voters backed Republican U.S. House candidates, and the GOP claimed 10 of 13 seats. 

Democratic gains might also be limited by incumbency. District 11 in Western North Carolina has the GOP’s smallest lean, at 9.7 percentage points. But in 2024, U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards ran four points ahead of Trump in his district. 

In the 1st District, Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis ran five points ahead of Harris to narrowly win reelection in 2024. But his redrawn district is now about eight points more Republican, giving it a 10.7-point GOP lean. It’s possible he could capitalize on an anti-Trump backlash, but it would be a steep climb. 

Further complicating matters, the new map moved Davis’ home into District 3. And U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, who represents District 3, has suggested that he might run in the new District 1. (Members of Congress don’t have to live in the district they represent.) 

In the other GOP-held districts, a Republican candidate would have to completely collapse before even a high-quality Democrat could have a chance. Take, for example, the 2024 race for North Carolina governor, which might be considered Democrats’ best-case scenario. 

Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson by 14.8 points, the widest margin in a governor’s race since 1980. Robinson’s campaign was derailed by a history of incendiary comments and allegations that the self-styled culture warrior had once frequented porn shops in Greensboro and had called himself a “black NAZI” who liked transgender porn on a porn site’s forum.  

With his landslide—outperforming the Democratic presidential candidate by 18 points—Stein would have won 10 of the new map’s 11 Republican strongholds, had the districts been in place at the time. But not by much. 

In six of those districts, Stein’s margin would have been less than three points.