2020 Census population data is out. What could it mean for NC’s 14th congressional seat?

North Carolina already knew it was getting another seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022.

Now the state is closer to figuring out exactly where that 14th seat will be and, importantly in a closely divided Congress, which party stands to benefit.

The U.S. Census Bureau released more granular population data Thursday, information that all states need to draw new maps for their congressional delegations and state legislatures.

The release was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, putting a time crunch on North Carolina lawmakers, who face a Dec. 6 deadline to finish redistricting.

A Republican-led redistricting committee will draw the congressional districts, which must be approved by the state House and Senate. Public hearings are expected. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, does not have a role in the process, putting Republicans in complete control.

Democrats hold a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, an edge that could be lost simply by Republican gains in redistricting nationally ahead of the 2022 mid-term elections.

What we know so far

North Carolina’s new U.S. House districts must have 746,711 people, plus or minus one person, according to the Census Bureau. State legislative districts have more wiggle room on population.

Four current districts have more than 800,000 people, according to 2019 data from the American Community Survey, an annual report collected by the Census Bureau. But the official determination on population for redistricting is made by the official once-a-decade Census. Those districts are:

• the 2nd Congressional District (parts of Wake County)

• the 4th (which includes Durham, Chapel Hill and part of Wake County)

• the 7th (which stretches from Johnston County to Wilmington)

• the 12th (parts of Mecklenburg County)

Thus those districts must shrink in size to shed population, making them cover less ground.

Conversely, the 1st Congressional District in northeastern North Carolina — an area that includes Wilson, Rocky Mount and Northampton County — has fewer than 746,711 people, according to the 2019 data. Thus, it would have to expand its coverage area to include more population.

Of North Carolina’s 100 counties, 51 lost population in the last decade, according to the Census data. Johnston County, Brunswick County and Cabarrus County — all counties located near population centers — saw the biggest growth, all growing by at last 26.8 percent.

Wake County and Mecklenburg County, by far the state’s largest counties, each grew by more than 20%. The metro areas around those counties accounted for nearly 80% of the state’s population growth over the decade.

At least one incumbent won’t be returning to the House. Rep. Ted Budd is not running for re-election in the 13th District. Instead, the Republican is running for U.S. Senate.

Republicans currently hold an 8-5 edge in the North Carolina delegation under maps redrawn for the 2020 election. None of the 13 congressional races in 2020 were decided by fewer than six percentage points and just two were decided by less than 10 percentage points. Nine winners earned more than 60% of the vote.

Gerrymandering ‘a threat to our democracy’

State Republicans adopted redistricting criteria Thursday that says “partisan considerations and election results data shall not be used in the drawing of districts.” Data identifying the race of voters are also not to be used in the “construction or consideration” of districts, according to the criteria.

Similar language was used in 2019 when redistricting brought on by a judicial ruling led to a new map that was more favorable to Democrats, who won five seats up from three in the previous map.

“North Carolina has been the epicenter of redistricting lawsuits for decades. It’s time to put the last 30 years of litigation behind us and begin a new era of nonpartisan map drawing,” said state Sen. Warren Daniel, a Republican co-chair of the redistricting committee.

But Democrats in Congress are pushing for federal voting rights legislation to end racial and partisan gerrymandering. It’s one reason that more than 100 state lawmakers from nearly 30 states, including North Carolina, rallied in Washington, D.C., last week, hoping to pressure the U.S. Senate to pass voting rights legislation.

“Something you saw in Alamance County was the impact gerrymandering has on how neighborhoods’ concerns and voices and issues that they care about are heard at the state level and then at the national level,” said state Rep. Ricky Hurtado, a Democrat who attended the rally in Washington.

“We’re facing that again in a few weeks as we begin redistricting in North Carolina.”

Even without looking at partisan or racial data, it is not hard to draw lines to advantage one party or another. Under the current maps, all of Guilford County is in the same district as much of Winston-Salem. The 6th Congressional District is represented by Democrat Kathy Manning.

But in the map used in 2016 and 2018, Winston-Salem and Forsyth County were drawn together with counties in the northwest part of the state and Guilford County was split into two other districts — famously through the middle of North Carolina A&T’s campus — resulting in three Republican-leaning districts.

In the map used in 2012 and 2014, voters in Cumberland County, home to Fayetteville, were dispersed into three separate congressional districts. The map had several bizarrely shaped districts and was ultimately tossed by the courts.

“The consequences of gerrymandering cannot be overstated — it takes away the will of the voters and locks politicians into a decade of power. Candidates with unpopular and even dangerous views can easily win districts that should be competitive. It’s a threat to our democracy,” former Attorney General Eric Holder wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

Holder, who served under Barack Obama, has previously filed suits in several states, including North Carolina, over voting rights and redistricting. In a February speech at the UNC School of Law, Holder said he expected more legal fights in the state.

Map fights in NC

The congressional map drawn from the 2020 Census is supposed to last for a decade. But that hasn’t been the case in North Carolina, where legal fights have reshaped the maps time and again.

In the 1990s, for example, one congressional map was used for the 1992, 1994 and 1996 elections with another being used in 1998 and a third used in 2000.

The same congressional map, enacted in 2001 after the 2000 Census, was used for every election between 2002 and 2010.

But in the last decade, the state again used three different maps for U.S. House elections — one for 2012 and 2014, one for 2016 and 2018 and still another in 2020. The first map was ruled a racial gerrymander, the second a partisan gerrymander by state judges after the Supreme Court decision and the third approved for one-time use only.

“The net result is the grievous and flawed 2016 map has been replaced,” Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway said at the time.

Republican lawmakers were upfront that they drew the districts to gain as much partisan advantage as possible, explaining that judges had said partisan considerations could be used through race could not — a line of reasoning that the Supreme Court upheld in 2019, saying such issues were “political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

“I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats,” then-Rep. David Lewis said at the time.

Who else is gaining a seat?

It’s a zero-sum game in the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives. If one state is gaining a seat, then another is losing one. The calculations are based on population. Every state is assured of at least one representative.

California and six states in the Northeast and Midwest lost a single seat during apportionment. North Carolina was one of five states to gain a single seat, while Texas gained two.

Balance of power

Republicans have enjoyed an edge in the state’s House delegation for the vast majority of the 21st century. Democrats won the majority of seats among the House delegation in the final mid-term election of President George W. Bush (2006) and held onto it in 2008 and 2010.

But Republicans were swept into power at the state level in the 2010 election — the first mid-term for President Barack Obama — and have had control of the map-drawing process since, leading to wide GOP leads in the makeup of the delegation.

North Carolina’s growth

The state’s population has more than doubled in the last 50 years, and North Carolina’s population has grown by nearly 4 million since the 1990 Census — just 30 years ago. As the state has grown, so, too, has the number of representatives in the 435-member Congress. And those lawmakers are representing more and more people each decade.

— Source: U.S. Census Bureau

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This story was originally published August 12, 2021 at 3:22 PM with the headline "2020 Census population data is out. What could it mean for NC’s 14th congressional seat?."