What Might Be The Electoral Dynamics of the 2022 Legislative Districts?

By Michael Bitzer

As I write this blog post on Thursday, Dec. 9, to say that this week has been yet another wild roller-coaster ride in the state's politics is probably stating the rather obvious. With the back and forth and back of candidate filing (or not) for the March 2022 primary election, the end result appears to be that the North Carolina Supreme Court has ordered the March primary to be moved to May, with all candidate filings suspended (not just for legislative races, but all contests). 

In that same order, the state's highest court directed the three-judge trial panel to hold its proceedings and issue their ruling by January 11, in about a month's time, a fairly quick turnaround considering the looming holidays. 

In this trial, the major question posed by those challenging the new congressional and state legislative district maps will center on the claim of partisan gerrymandering, as noted in the plaintiff's complaint:

Redistricting and American Democracy Conference

Duke University will be hosting a conference September 28 & 29 on "Redistricting and American Democracy." The conference will bring together scholars, practitioners, and advocates virtually to take stock of the current legal and political landscape, preview the upcoming redistricting process in North Carolina and elsewhere, and discuss the path forward for redistricting reforms. 

Two of ONSP contributions, Drs. Chris Cooper and Michael Bitzer, will be participating in the conference. Registration for the conference can be made here, with a general overview of the two-day program here and the schedule here.

What Precinct Polarization Might Tell Us About NC's Politics Before Redistricting Kicks Off

By Michael Bitzer

As the U.S. Census Bureau gets ready to release the data for redistricting activities in the states, a sense of what the "ground" in North Carolina politics looks like going into the "most political activity in American politics" would shine some light on the future maps and their designs.

North Carolina redistricting efforts are centered around a core set of principles, often referred to as the Stephenson criteria. Written by then Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake of the NC Supreme Court (a summary of the full criteria can be found in his majority opinion, starting on page 42), one of the key components is the "whole county" provision of the state constitution, which holds that for both state senate and house districts, "No county shall be divided in the formation..." of districts (Sections 3 & 5, sub-section 3 of Article II).

Therefore, when legislators begin their work, they will start with counties that can sustain legislative districts within themselves, and then work towards "clustering" other counties to develop districts as well (a good explanation of this principle is found here). 

But beyond the counties, one can dive even deeper into political geography through precincts (or voting tabulation districts ("VTDs")), which are the foundational geographic areas for election administration and where voters (who vote on Election Day) go to a central site to cast their ballots. 

The NC Legislature Couldn't Use Political Data, But The Rest of Us Can: Analysis of the Proposed NC Maps

Now that the new NC legislative district maps have been submitted for review by the three-judge panel, those of us who study North Carolina politics can analyze how these maps may 'politically behave' with election data, something the General Assembly was barred from doing by court order.

As a reminder, the court held that the legislature had engaged in partisan gerrymandering with the state legislative district maps, and ordered the General Assembly to redraw the district maps containing the following counties in the state house:

Analyzing the "Non-Partisan" Legislative Districts in Mecklenburg County

With the approval of the proposed North Carolina State House and State Senate 'non-partisan' legislative maps, the North Carolina General Assembly is close to meeting its court-ordered redrawing of legislative districts for review by the three-judge superior court panel this week.

Much has been made about whether the new legislative districts in certain counties represent a truly 'non-partisan' redrawing of the maps, especially since the court order mandated that no electoral (read, partisan) data was to be used in the creation of the new districts.

There will be some debate over whether the 'base-line' maps (selected by random draws from the simulated maps provided by Dr. Chen) were non-partisan or not, but that is for the court to decide. However, those of us outside the legislative process do have partisan/electoral data at our disposal to analyze the precincts assigned to the proposed state house and senate districts.

While there are several counties that are being redrawn due to the court order, I decided to use Mecklenburg County to analyze their proposed state house and senate districts, due to the fact that Mecklenburg County gives their precinct election results with early votes (absentee one-stop, in particular) assigned back to the voter's respective precinct. Some counties (like Wake County) do not have their early votes publicly reassigned back to the precinct, make it harder to analyze a precinct's true electoral behavior (if anyone has a lead on how to get those precinct election returns to include early votes, please drop me an e-mail).

NC Makes Constitutional Law History Again

In my previous post, I contemplated whether North Carolina's partisan gerrymandering case, known as "Rucho v. Common Cause" and combined with a Maryland case, would make constitutional law history. And indeed, it did.

It made history because the court, until a new majority assumes power, said "we aren't getting involved in these partisan gerrymandering cases because they are too political." Which further made the court a political institution, in the eyes of some, and an odd savior of partisan gerrymandering to others.

In an interview the day of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision not to involve federal courts in partisan gerrymandering because of the "political question" doctrine regarding justiciability, I mentioned the fact that we have a dual judicial system, with both a federal court system and a state court system. And that the state case, challenging partisan gerrymandering based on state constitutional law, was working its way through the state system and could end up at the North Carolina Supreme Court. Immediately after my comments, former state senator Bob Rucho (the "Rucho" of the case name) said the following:

NC could make constitutional law history yet again

With the pending decision by the US Supreme Court regarding North Carolina's redistricting & partisan gerrymandering case, the Old North State once again could enter the annuals of history when it comes to redistricting efforts: first, the state dominated the jurisprudence regarding race, redistricting, and racial gerrymandering; now, the state, along with a case out of Maryland, could be one of the lead decisions regarding politics, redistricting, and partisan gerrymandering.

In order to get the full impact of the Supreme Court's decision, it is best to get a sense of how this issue came to dominate the political landscape and how we got to awaiting the final opinion.

Following the 2011's redistricting efforts, led by supermajorities of Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly and not subject to a governor's review or veto (see NC Constitution, Article II, Section 22, Subsection 5), the initial congressional maps were challenged as racial gerrymandering. That legal challenge ended with the US Supreme Court upholding the lower court's judgment that the congressional district maps were unconstitutional, based on racial gerrymandering (Cooper v. Harris, 2017).

With the 2018 Election dust settling, let's revisit redistricting's influence

Now that the dust is settling on the North Carolina 2018 mid-terms (I can't speak for other states), we can begin to analyze and dig deeper into the data of voters who showed up to cast ballots, once that information is released by the counties to the NC State Board of Elections. It will likely be posted into the "voter history" data file, found here, and I'll work to slice out the 2018 voters and merge it with the voter registration file.

Yet there is some analysis beginning to show about the results of the Old North State's elections and what it might mean. One that caught my eye was over at LongLeaf Politics blog, about the issue of Democrats "winning" more votes yet not gaining a proportional representation in either the U.S. House or in the state legislature.

In Andrew Dunn's argument, Democrats

"tend to live in big cities. Rural areas are reliably red. Geographically, rural areas are simply much larger. So in most any way you draw districts, Democrats tend to pack together."

Yes, urban areas (i.e., "big cities") are trending more Democratic, and in North Carolina, urban counties are noticeably blue in elections (and some are becoming bluer with each election).

But how do we know that Democrats are "packed" together in urban areas: is it 50 percent of all Democrats are concentrated in urban areas? Are there few, if any, Democrats out in the ruby red rural counties? What about the supposed 'battleground' suburbs (which, in the Old North State's surrounding suburban counties, aren't really that competitive, as noted above)--are Democrats suburbanite voters, or are they all just big city dwellers?

NC's Partisan Gerrymandering Kicked Back by SCOTUS to Reconsider "Standing"

This morning, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued an order vacating the decision by the Middle District of North Carolina regarding the district court's findings of partisan gerrymandering by the North Carolina General Assembly of the congressional district map (known as Rucho v. Common Cause), and remanding the case back to the Middle NC District Court to consider the decision by SCOTUS in the Wisconsin redistricting case of Gill v. Whitford, announced a few weeks ago. In Gill, SCOTUS vacated the lower's court's previous decision in finding an unconstitutional gerrymandering by the Wisconsin legislature, and asked for reconsideration of the "standing" of the plaintiffs in the case.

Another Significant Court Case Dealing with NC's Congressional Districts

Never underestimate that a major news story can break while you are cooking dinner--which is what happened this evening.

A federal three-judge district court panel for the Middle District of North Carolina issued a 190 page opinion striking down the 2016's congressional district maps drawn by state legislative Republicans. In the past, the factor that drew the court's ire was race, but this time, the judges took square aim at partisan gerrymandering and ruled the 10-3 GOP-favor maps unconstitutional. To summarize, this is a significant opinion that may likely determine how partisanship reigns, or doesn't, in the future of American politics. Here are the highlights of the opinion, based on a Tweet thread that I posted, and a little background:

The Bow Tie Caucus Discusses South Carolina's primaries & North Carolina's redistricting

I was interviewed on Time Warner Cable News' NC Capital Tonight with Dr. Susan Roberts from Davidson College on South Carolina's primaries and North Carolina's redistricting issues.

The Need for Independent Redistricting in North Carolina

This post appeared on WFAE's The Party Line. 

A bi-partisan bill has been introduced into the N.C. House of Representatives to hand over the redistricting process in the state to an independent commission, and thus give up one of the most important powers that any majority party has: pre-determining which party will win each district through political gerrymandering.

The legislation would charge the Legislative Services Office with drawing congressional and legislative districts without the use of “political affiliations of registered voters, previous election returns, [or] demographic information, other than population head counts.” 

In addition, the bill states that no district “shall be drawn for the purpose of favoring a political party, incumbent legislator, or member of Congress, or other person or group, or for the purpose of augmenting or diluting the voting strength of a language or racial minority group,” along with barring the use “of any of the addresses or geographic locations of incumbents.”

In the game of politics, this would be a radical departure for the next round of redistricting in the state in 2021—but one that would probably earn the legislators some form of public admiration, because the parties would be giving up their power over the voters.

In looking at the consequences of the most recent redistricting done by Republicans in 2011, we can see what the “victors” do with their spoils in winning control of the redrawing process. 

In the 2012 election under the new legislative maps, Republicans created safe districts for both themselves and for Democrats—but created disportionately more districts for the GOP than the opposition.

In the state senate, six contests out of fifty could be considered “competitive” (meaning that the winner received less than 55% of the vote).  In fact, three times as many seats (18) had no opposition contesting the election.

If all of the state senate votes for Democratic and Republican candidates were added up respectively across the state, Democratics garnered 47% to Republican’s 53%.  But Republicans ended up with 66% of the seats to Democrats’ 34%, creating a disproportionate advantage for the Republican party.

In the state house, a similar pattern emerged: Republican candidates garnered 51% of the total state-wide vote, but won 64% of the seats in the chamber.

In fact, nearly half of the 120 seats in the house went uncontested (27 automatically went to Republicans, while 28 went to Democrats).  A little over ten percent (14 seats) could be considered “competitive” in terms of the winner securing less than 55% of the vote.

So it appears that political gerrymandering seems to exist in the North Carolina General Assembly districts.

Another way to look at this gerrymandering is to explore the relationship between presidential voting in the district and the voting for the district’s legislative candidates. If the district was “competitive,” then there could be districts that, for example, voted for Obama while, at the same time, voted for a Republican for the state house.

In only ten percent of the 120 state house seats did the presidential candidate of one party win in the same district as the opposition party’s legislative candidate.  For example, in District 92, Obama carried the district with 54% of the vote while the Republican state house candidate won with 51% of the vote. 

In District 119, Mitt Romney won the district with 51% of the presidential vote while the Democratic legislative candidate won the same district with 52% of the vote. 

With so few districts having ‘split-ticket voting’ patterns, it is notable that the Romney vote in a district has a strong correlation to the vote cast for the Republican House candidate. 

Correlation between a District Voting for Mitt Romney

and the Republican State House and Senate Candidates

In the upper chamber, only two districts out of 50 saw the two parties split the contests at the presidential and state senate. 

In District 19, Obama won by a little over 500 votes, but the Republican won the state senate seat with 54% of the vote.  In District 25, Romney won with 58% while the Democrat claimed the senate seat with 53% of the vote.

One could attribute the strong correlation in both chambers between the presidential and state legislative races to the drawing of district lines that favor one party over another from the top of the ballot down. 

But if the districts were drawn without regards to party affiliation, past election results, and ignorance of an incumbent’s address, the legislative races in North Carolina might reflect a long-held belief of American democracy: that the voters should pick the candidates, rather than the candidates picking the voters.