When I started working in politics in North Carolina about 25 years ago, we had two main metrics to determine whether districts were competitive or not: party registration and race. While both factors still matter, the state is changing and how we identify competitive races is, too. The influx of new voters into the state has changed voting behaviors and they’ll continue to shift.
For years, we considered any district with 20% or more African-Americans competitive. Today, those numbers depend on whether or not the district is more rural or more urban/suburban. While Democrats can still count on 90% or so support from African-Americans in rural areas, white voters in rural districts are voting increasingly Republican. Rural North Carolina is starting to behave more like more like Deep South states.
However, white voters in urban/suburban increasingly support Democratic candidates as more educated voters shift from Republican to Democrat. In addition, African-Americans are no longer the only minority in more urban regions. Hispanic and Asian immigrants make up a larger share of the electorate each year. Republicans’ embrace of populism and anti-immigrant legislation has driven those voters to support Democratic candidates.
I was also taught that as long as Republicans made up less than one-third of the registered voters, the district was competitive. In the late 1990s, the fast growing ranks of unaffiliated voters reflected white Democrats transitioning to the GOP. We essentially counted them as Republicans. Today, those unaffiliated voters are more independent with newcomers and younger voters often more likely to support Democrats. In urban/suburban areas those unaffiliated voters are sometimes more progressive than the Democratic Party.
The best example of the changing tide is North Carolina’s Second Congressional District. According to Dr. Michael Bitzer’s analysis, the district is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans with each making up 34% of the electorate and unaffiliated voters comprising 31%. African-Americans only make up 19% of the registered voters. Using the old standards, this district should be solidly Republican. However, in 2016, Trump won it by less than 10%, making it the second most competitive Republican-held district in the state.
What’s different? Well, only 16% of the district is rural and 7% of the voters are non-white but not African-American. It’s also one the fastest growing districts in the state. The district is trending Democratic. It’s 10 points better for Democrats than the one they picked up in Pennsylvania last week. With the right candidate, it could certainly turn blue in a year like 2018.
As the state grows and changes, we’ll need to find different criteria to determine the viability of districts. Fast growing districts will increasingly be Democratic. Suburbanites might not like higher taxes but they also aren’t buying into the populism that’s taking over the Republican Party. The fight for those voters will intensify in coming years. Race will continue to play a factor but if the GOP continues to alienate younger, more diverse voters, they’ll have a more difficult time protecting their majorities through gerrymandering.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
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