Saturday, February 1, 2020

"Carolina Campaigns" Podcast has its first episode

I'm pleased to announce that I've joined up with Dr. Joe Cabosky for a new podcast on North Carolina politics, campaigns, and elections (along with other topics that come to our minds) called "Carolina Campaigns."

Dr. Cabosky is an assistant professor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches market research and case studies, along with conducting research into diversifying and disrupting strategic communications, public relations, and advertising. He writes at cabpolitical.com.

Our podcasts will run every two weeks (or so), and can be found on SoundCloud. Our first episode looks at the Iowa Caucuses a week out, and the political nuances that can be found in North Carolina politics, from both of our points of view and scholarly work. We hope you'll take a listen.

Monday, January 27, 2020

Analysis of North Carolina State House Districts

by Michael Bitzer

With the upcoming North Carolina primary elections on March 3, and with the state legislative and congressional district maps finalized for the 2020 election, here's a look at the North Carolina House of Representatives districts for where things stand at the beginning of the year, and the possible classifications for each district come November.

My approach to classifying districts is based on their partisan behavior, meaning the categories use a combination of factors: presidential results within the district; voter registration percentages (party registration and racial demographics) from the January 11, 2020 registration file from the North Carolina State Board of Elections; and the district's 'regionalism,' namely the percentage of registered voters in center cities (urban counties), outside of the center city but still inside an urban county, a surrounding suburban county, or a rural county.

First, to give a sense of how the four regions performed as a whole in the 2016 presidential election, this chart gives the four regions and their state-wide performances: