Starting with Asheville, we can see pretty quickly the impacts of the gerrymander (the first map in the table below). Rep. Prather’s seat went from  Biden winning the seat by double digits, to one that voted for Trump by 8 points. Previously, Asheville itself was dissected pretty intensely, and fixing that issue was one of the better parts of the new map. Still, this style of split is bad for Communities of Interest (COI). The east/west halves of the county serve as better dividing lines. The second map below was created to remedy this. This has a strictly Asheville centric district with seats in the eastern and western portions of the county. It also makes Prather’s seat a true tossup at Trump+0.8, which would promote greater competition. 

Moving to the north, one is presented with the issue of Cluster A’s iterations (shown below). This cluster comprises 7 counties in the northwest of the state. It contains medium-blue Watauga County with Appalachian State University in Boone. Ideally, one could get a competitive seat out of the area. The old HD 93, in 2018, was represented by a Democrat when the seat was Ashe and Watauga counties. 

Option A1 provides the best opportunity for a competitive seat, combining the city of Lenoir with Watauga County. Unfortunately, A2 was used instead. This splits Watauga, removing one of the competitive Blowing Rock area precincts, decreasing the odds of a competitive 93rd. No matter which version one uses, some counties will have to be split. It comes down to what is being  prioritized. 

The next issue area is the Gaston County area. Due to the rules regulating splitting counties, two districts have to be wholly within the county, while a third is needed to take excess population and hop across the Cleveland County line. In both iterations of the state house maps, the city of Gastonia itself is heavily dissected (shown below). What this serves to do is crack Gastonia’s African American community resulting in a much lower likelihood of electing a representative of their choice, most likely a Democrat. For those unversed in DRA’s (Dave’s Redistricting App) coloring, the blue and white hues denote more heavily African American precincts. From the GOP’s point of view, the Black population of Gastonia was fairly efficiently divided amongst three districts. With the Black Voting Age Population (VAP) only hitting 21.6%. A fair map would likely see one district hit closer to 30% Black VAP, which would make for a competitive seat.

Next up, we have the Winston-Salem area cluster, containing Forsyth and Stokes counties. This cluster is particularly interesting because it went red in 2022 due to uncontested seats after voting for Joe Biden in 2020 by around 6 points. Forsyth County has historically been one of the more conservative major cities in the state, but it has been a more liberal place federally since the Obama era.

The issue with this iteration is that it’s a partisan gerrymander disguised as promoting minority rights. African American and Hispanic communities were packed into two seats. Taking this cluster from Biden +6 is now 60-40 for Republicans. As shown below, it’s not impossible to manage a fair partisan breakdown with a Democrat-leaning swing seat while promoting minority representation. The alternative version moves HD 74, in western Winston-Salem, from a Trump+10-ish seat to a Biden+5-ish seat (shown below).

Mecklenburg County is the next victim of the Republican’s gerrymandering crusade. This time designed to benefit party switcher Tricia Cotham. The county is overwhelmingly Democratic, with Republican geographic turf shrinking rapidly. Republicans are still able to win precincts near the Iredell County border, the disproportionately white area of Charlotte (the Wedge) and along the Union County border. A fair map would see a competitive seat in the north of the county (which there is), and also a competitive seat along the Union border. While Cotham’s new seat meets this requirement, the jaggedness of the seat is what clearly makes it a gerrymander.

Below is a comparison of the current seat (left) and a hypothetical, un-gerrymandered version (right). Both seats sit along the Union County border, and contain most of Mint Hill and Matthews. The difference is the hypothetical version doesn’t snake through The Wedge to take in disproportionately Republican precincts. The hypothetical version sits around Biden+0.8, versus the current version’s Trump+2. 

Neighboring Cabarrus County also has significant issues. The previous iteration of the map (below, left) was drawn to create two competitive seats on the Mecklenburg border. The new version leaves one semi-competitive seat (below, right), and the other is a clear attempt to oust Democratic Rep. Diamond Stanton-Williams. Given the county is becoming much more competitive in recent years, the current iteration is not representative of the area.

The only marginally good aspect of the current version is that the Kannapolis area is kept mostly together. The city hops the Rowan County line, and is subsequently hard to redistrict. However, one can still draw two competitive seats in Cabarrus by doing so, and the rural turf of the east of the county does not need to be grouped with Concord.

Alamance County, while one of the redder counties along the I-40 corridor, has become more competitive in recent years, like Cabarrus. Gov. Cooper almost carried it in his 2020 run. The previous map enacted saw a safe Republican seat, and a lean-Democratic seat. The redraw makes two more Republican-leaning seats, and cuts the city of Burlington in half. Cutting the city in half serves to crack Democratic votes across the two seats in an attempt to hold onto another house seat for a short period of time. 

  Below is the current layout of the district (left) and a proposed version (right). The current version is deceptively compact, which serves to validate the map at a glance without delving into its stats and splits. The proposed version is actually compact and enables Democrats to win a seat. Admittedly, the proposed version does make a seat more safely Democratic than the pre-2022 version, Biden+10ish vs Biden+3.5, but it better divides the more urban/suburban parts of Alamance from the more exurban/rural areas.

In the Raleigh area, Republicans sought to strengthen one of their incumbents, and oust a Democratic incumbent. Making a compact, Republican-leaning seat in southern Wake County is justified, but attempting to make a Republican seat in the north is not. In the map below (left), one can see that to make a Trump-won seat the map has to be jagged and seriously split Wake Forest. The map on the right represents the COI better, close to the pre-2022 iteration of the seat, and shifts the district from Trump+5 to Biden+5. Not totally out of reach for Republicans who had incumbents representing double digit Biden seats under the previous map.

To the north of Raleigh, we see a cluster of Franklin, Granville, and Vance counties. Between these, there are supposed to be two districts. The means of dividing these that has made the most sense is grouping most of Granville with Vance County leaving Franklin to take the excess population from its Wake-adjacent precincts. Vance is more of a Black Belt County, Franklin has become more of an exurb of Raleigh, and Granville something in between. 

By contrast, the current map sees fit to split Vance County instead. Thus dropping the Black percentage of the ensuing Granville/Vance district, while maintaining the non-competitiveness of the Franklin County-based seat. The resulting Granville/Vance seat drops from 43.4% Black VAP (left) (above some of the thresholds required by court rulings for VRA seats) to 39.6% (right). In terms of partisanship, the Granville/Vance seat goes from Biden+10 to just over Biden+5, which would seem to serve to protect the Republican incumbent in the seat, who won in an upset in 2022. 

The next issue arises as an issue with the county clusters. The C set of possible House clusters is innately problematic. As you can see below, the clustering guide gives two options; C1 and C2. C1 is the iteration that has been used in both iterations of the map, and isn’t producing gerrymanders so much as innately being poor relating to COI. C1 requires seats that merge the Black Belt counties (Hertford, Washington, and arguably Pasquotank counties) with those in the Outer Banks, famous as a vacation hot spot and as the titular setting of a Netflix series. While Hertford and Pasquotank are together, they get grouped with Camden, which makes the district significantly whiter (and more Republican).

C2 brings another issue to a head: land contiguity. In the green district drawn in C2, the district is not contiguous by land. One would have to take a boat or swim from Currituck County to the mainland. Additionally, the purple area is only connected to Ocracoke Island via ferry. Even on C1, the land contiguity issue has to be addressed. This necessitates a snake-like district stretching from Pamlico County (adjacent to the Crystal Coast) up to Chowan and Perquimans across the Albemarle Sound (shown below). 

The last major suburban cluster to be discussed here is that of Johnston and Harnett counties. These are both decent sized and fairly Republican. However, the districts were drawn to future-proof Johnston County after it began to drift left in recent years. Central and Northern Johnston County now see much more competitive precincts, including some that Democrats have flipped. 

The enacted map below fairly effectively cuts that competitive area in half. Trump won each of the four seats in this cluster by over ten points in 2020. Democrats might have a shot at the navy-blue seat in northern Johnston as the decade progresses, but that’s far from a certainty.

The iteration below attempts to solve this. It keeps the likely competitive turf together for a seat that Trump won in 2020 by about 8 points. Democrats will have a shot at this as the decade progresses. Additionally, the district that hops the Harnett/Johnston line is a bit cleaner. The outer Johnston seat could be a bit neater, but attempts were made to keep precinct splitting to a minimum.

The last two issues on the current map revolve primarily around the B cluster options. Wayne County, home to Goldsboro, is put in an awkward place in each instance. B1 groups it with Sampson County, and B2 with Duplin County. The issue posed is that Goldsboro in the center of the county is a bright blue city, and home to a sizable African American population. Keeping this community together would make for a swing seat, but in terms of compactness, that is difficult to do. The easier cluster would be B1. 

The Republicans drawing the map did not perceive this to be an issue, and went with option B2. As shown below (left), they chose to cut Goldsboro in half, making it unlikely either half will elect an African American representative (or a Democrat). The image on the right is a hypothetical version that attempts to keep their community together and produces a district that Biden won by a few hundred votes. With the COI concerns addressed, this Sampson County district is about as compact as can reasonably be expected. Compactness would be a lot worse in attempting to do so with the Duplin/Wayne configuration.

Additionally in this cluster, Onslow County and either Duplin or Pender are to have three seats between them. Two entirely within Onslow and one combining the leftover population with one of the other two counties. Pender is used on this version, which rules out the better Wayne County configuration. The examples below will humor this choice. 

Onslow County is home to Jacksonville, while not strongly Democratic, a competitive seat can still be drawn there. Republicans split Onslow so that none of the component districts of the cluster are under Trump+ 20 (left). A hypothetical redraw of the cluster could make two safely Republican seats, and one around Trump+4.

Switching to the configuration with Duplin joined to Onslow for a district, we can achieve a similar result. In the below map, just like the proposed version above, two safely Republican seats are created, and one marginal Trump seat (around Trump+5 this time). This would allow for a competitive district in Wayne County to be created as well, and, in general, promoting competition in typically non-justifiably uncompetitive parts of the state. 

The State House map is an atrocious gerrymander that takes Democratic control off the table in a 50/50 state. The previous iteration of the map used from 2022-2024 had some flaws, but at least in terms of partisanship and proportionality, was well representative of the state. African Americans are also systematically disadvantaged in the new map vs the old map. Hopefully, this has shed some light on how this gerrymander functions and the motives of the North Carolina Republicans who drew it.