North Carolina GOP lawmakers have proposed new boundary lines for congressional districts starting in 2024 that could threaten the reelection of several current Democrat members of the House of Representatives.
Candidate filings for the 2024 election are expected to begin in early December. North Carolina’s 14-seat congressional delegation is currently evenly split between the left and right, consisting of seven Democrats and seven Republicans.
However, Republican lawmakers have proposed reworking the districts, unveiling two proposed maps on Oct. 18.
The district proposals would reportedly split each of the state’s largest counties, which surround heavily Democratic Charlotte, Raleigh, and Greensboro, into as many as three districts, some of which pull in more Republican suburban and rural voters.
If approved, statewide election data attached to one of the proposals indicates it could create 10 reworked districts that overly favor a Republican candidate being elected by voters.
Only three would favor a Democrat candidate. One district is being predicted to be competitive. In the other proposal, the data indicate 11 of the 14 reworked districts would favor the election of a Republican candidate.
“The conventional wisdom is that this probably nets Republicans at least three seats in the U.S. House and makes the math of keeping a Republican majority a little easier,” he said.
The state House and Senate reportedly want to have the final plan by the end of the month. In the coming days, the two proposals are expected to be debated by legislative committees. It’s unclear which of the two restructuring proposals will advance at this stage.
New Republican Leaning Districts Could Force Out Democrats
If the proposals succeed, Mr. Hildebrand said Democrats could face running in newly created Republican-leaning districts, lessening their odds of being elected or forcing them to go elsewhere.“Do you run in a district that you know, that you’ve built some ties to, that you’ve been representing already but that now seems out of reach politically?” Mr. Hildebrand said.
“Or do you move on and look at other races? That’s a hard decision for the three, perhaps four, incumbents who will find themselves out of a seat,” he added.
The current restructuring proposals have been a long time coming. In 2021, the North Carolina Supreme Court, which had a Democrat majority at the time, struck down the Republican controlled General Assembly’s previous attempts.
It was argued the proposed changes to the districts’ boundaries went against the state Constitution’s barring of extensive partisan gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering is the manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create an undue advantage for a political party. Independent trial judges created the interim congressional plan used in the 2022 elections.
However, the state Supreme Court has since changed from a Democratic majority to Republican, which has ruled the state Constitution doesn’t limit gerrymandering.
North Carolina is one of multiple states, including Georgia, Alabama, New York, and Louisiana, which could experience changes to congressional maps ahead of the 2024 election.
