How significant was your vote? Depends on where in NC you live
As North Carolinians cast their votes, Republicans had a few things working in their favor: Higher than expected turnout among voters preferring President Donald Trump. Differences in how the parties approached campaigning in a pandemic. Turmoil in the U.S. Senate race near the top of the ballot.
But they also had one other slight advantage, born out of a constitutional requirement to use 10-year-old population numbers for the 2020 election.
During those 10 years, the state saw big population changes as urban and suburban areas exploded with new residents, and much of rural North Carolina saw residents leaving. As a result, a rural voter tended to have a bigger voice in the decisions on state and federal legislative seats than an urban or suburban voter.
Those rural voters broke heavily for Trump, a Republican who barnstormed smaller towns across North Carolina with rallies drawing thousands in the final days of the election. Those voters also elected Republicans to Congress and state legislative seats, helping the GOP keep its hold on the General Assembly and the state’s congressional delegation.
These population shifts will be incorporated into redistricting for the 2022 elections, providing a sudden boost for urban areas’ political clout. But since Republicans held control of the state legislature in this election, they will again devise the new districts. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who won reelection this month, has no veto power over redistricting.
Redistricting lawsuits led to state lawmakers redrawing gerrymandered districts, including one last year that reshaped all of the state’s congressional districts.
An analysis of population changes in voter districts by Carolina Demography at UNC-Chapel Hill found:
▪ Population estimates show that the average congressional district size is 816,300 residents. The 12th district in Mecklenburg County and the 2nd district in Wake County each had more than 900,000 residents. That’s nearly 11% above the average. Meanwhile, the 1st District covering much of rural northeastern North Carolina had nearly 87,000 fewer voters, or more than 10%.
▪ In the state Senate, average district size is 212,614 residents. A district next to Wilmington that includes fast-growing Brunswick County had more than 250,000, or nearly 18% more. A rural district taking in five northeastern rural counties had 36,000 fewer residents than the average, a 17% difference.
▪ In the state House, the average sized district is 88,589 residents. A rural northeastern district taking in Halifax and Northampton counties had nearly 17,500 fewer residents, or nearly 20% less, while the most overpopulated district representing all of Brunswick had nearly 18,500 more residents, or nearly 21% above the average.
Rural vs. urban
Preliminary election results show a majority of significantly overpopulated urban districts went Democrat, while a majority of significantly underpopulated rural districts chose Republicans. There were exceptions: The single least populated district in the congressional delegation, state Senate and state House went to Democrats, and the fast-growing Brunswick state legislative districts went to Republican incumbents.
The data shows the state House had the widest percentage variance in under and overpopulated districts, followed by the state Senate and congressional delegation. That’s likely because the state House has 120 districts, compared to 50 in the state Senate and 13 congressional districts. State lawmakers are also allowed to vary the population in state legislative districts by 5% to help keep counties whole.
Republicans won nine of 13 state House districts that were underpopulated by more than 10%. They also won 12 of 17 underpopulated districts of 5% or more in the state Senate. For Congress, Republicans captured five of six districts that were underpopulated by 4% or more, including the 5th district Rep. Virginia Foxx won that is 48,000 residents or 5.5% below the average sized district.
“It’s another way in which the Democrats started the election a little bit on the back foot,” said Chris Cooper, a Western Carolina University professor who leads the political science department.
North Carolina may not be alone. Other states also had major population growth in urban areas over the past decade that may not be reflected in congressional districts, said Jonathan Cervas, a post doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University who has worked on court-ordered redistricting.
“It’s probably worse in North Carolina than in other places because it’s a very quickly growing state, and especially in (that) there is a very big disproportion between the rural area growth and the urban area growth.”
He too said the rural-urban differences in district size aided Republicans in North Carolina who were already benefiting from gerrymandering.
“It’s not just that they are malapportioned,” Cervas said. “It’s that you still have built-in gerrymandering. The court did not undo the gerrymander that existed. They only slightly undid the gerrymander that existed.”
He noted that two overpopulated urban districts in the Triangle had tremendous turnout. Districts 2 and 4 were among the top five congressional districts nationally in voter turnout, he said. Neither were competitive races, with Democrats Deborah Ross and Rep. David Price each pulling roughly two-thirds of the vote.
All told, more votes were cast for Democrats in the congressional races, but they still ended up in an 8-to-5 minority. That’s closer than the current 10-3 split favoring Republicans. But Cervas said it should be even more equal based on the statewide results.
One of the Democrats’ wins was in the 12th, where Rep. Alma Adams went uncontested. That skews the total vote, because many Republicans likely didn’t vote in that race, but Cervas said even if they had a candidate their turnout wouldn’t change his opinion that the split between the parties should be closer.
In the state House, Republican candidates received 50% of the vote to the Democrats’ 49.1%, but unofficial results showed they increased their lead in the chamber from 65 to 69 seats, leaving the Democrats with 51. In the state Senate, Republicans won 50.2% of the vote to the Democrats’ 48.5%, but only lost one seat for a 28 to 22 edge.
Redrawing districts
State and federal laws require state lawmakers to redraw districts after the Census, which takes place every 10 years. Republicans who took control of the legislature in 2010, and the Democrats who held it long before, had to follow rules that require congressional districts of equal populations. State districts could vary no more than 5% from the average, a leeway given in part to try to keep counties from being split up.
Districts are supposed to be drawn that way to keep in line with the democratic principle that each person’s vote counts the same. But as North Carolina’s population changed, the state started to look more like the equivalent of the Electoral College in presidential elections – with the number of delegates providing a slight advantage to less populated states.
State Sen. Ralph Hise, a Spruce Pine Republican, led his chamber’s redistricting efforts. They had to redraw state and congressional districts in recent years because of court cases delving into gerrymanders benefiting Republicans, but they still had to use the 2010 Census as the U.S. Constitution requires.
“Every time it must go back and be drawn using the 2010 Census data,” Hise said.
He did not see the population changes having much impact on state and federal legislative races.
Rebecca Tippett, the founding director for Carolina Demography, first reported in 2016 how the population changes were likely to impact congressional districts. The N&O asked her to update and expand her research for the 2020 election after seeing the vote tallies in the 2nd and 4th congressional districts.
Her work has a couple caveats. The population shifts over the years are educated estimates, and in cases where districts included part of a county, or were entirely made up of a part of a county in urban areas, she had to apportion the overall percentage growth in that county to those districts.
She said in email responses that she didn’t analyze the population changes to see if they favored one party over another, but it was clear that rural voters benefit at the expense of urban and suburban ones.
“Based on current population estimates, there are more voters per representative in urban and suburban districts than in more rural districts,” she said.
Tippett doubted that lawmakers in redrawing districts in recent years could have accounted for the population shifts while staying true to the 2010 Census numbers.
“They had to use data from the 2010 Census — and we are still waiting on data from the 2020 Census to know how population really grew and changed,” she said.
Since the 2010 Census, North Carolina has added an estimated 952,333 residents, or 10%, the Census Bureau has reported. Given the growth in urban areas, North Carolina is expected to gain a 14th congressional district. The number of seats in the state legislature won’t change, however, so areas that have lost population or were stagnant could see their clout diminish if lawmakers provide more seats to urban areas.
Democrats say the population shifts work in their favor.
“At some point you reach a tipping point, and think about what you saw happen with this cycle,” said Morgan Jackson, Cooper’s political strategist. “This cycle, you saw Georgia reach a tipping point, where Atlanta became too big for the rest of the state. I think North Carolina is headed in that direction, and the question is when do we reach that tipping point?”
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 12:48 PM.