Monday, March 14, 2022

Understanding District Partisan Lean in 2022: A Case for Chilling Out

 by Christopher Cooper

At long last, we know the details of North Carolina's State House, State Senate, and Congressional districts. Soon after they were enacted, think tanks, academics and journalists began to analyze how these districts leaned according to various partisan metrics. Sometimes these competing metrics can get a little confusing, so I'll review a few of them below (note: not an exhaustive list), describing how they are calculated. The bottom line, however, is that which metric you choose doesn't matter much in how you understand the partisan lean of North Carolina's districts--a point that I'll review in greater detail below.