Daily Kos Elections's project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation returns to North Carolina, where a court order resulted in many legislative seats being redrawn for the 2018 cycle. Unfortunately, despite Democrats’ hopes, the new maps still give the GOP a huge advantage.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that had struck down 28 of North Carolina's 170 state legislative districts on the grounds that Republicans had violated the Constitution by diminishing the power of black voters when they drew these maps in 2011. However, the GOP legislature still got first crack at drawing remedial maps, and they took the opportunity to shore up a number of Republican districts—something they otherwise were not permitted to do, since the state constitution prohibits mid-decade redistricting.
A Democratic challenge to this backdoor gerrymander ran aground in the courts, leaving Republicans with maps they can still be quite happy with. As a result, breaking the GOP's veto-proof three-fifths supermajorities in either chamber is still going to be a major challenge for Democrats, much less actually gaining control of the legislature.
The easiest way to show how much the new lines favor the GOP compared to the old ones is to look at how many seats both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton won. Trump carried the state by a close 50.5-46.8 margin, and under the old maps, he won 31 of the 50 Senate seats and 76 of the 120 House seats. Under the new boundaries, Trump carried 32 Senate seats and 75 House districts, a net difference of exactly zero seats. All members of both houses are up every two years.
However, Senate Republicans probably have more to lose than their counterparts in the lower chamber this year. One way to look a little deeper is to sort each seat in each chamber by Trump's margin of victory over Clinton and see how the seat in the middle—known as the median seat—voted. Because North Carolina has an even number of seats, we average the presidential margin for the middle two seats to come up with the median.
Under the old Senate map, the median seat backed Trump 58-40, but under the new one, he carried it 55-43—8 points to the right of his statewide win. That's still very bad for Democrats, but it's a bit less tough. However, while the old median point in the House favored Trump 54-42, the new one supported him 55-41, which is actually a bit worse. This means that, if Democrats want to take the barest of majorities, they're going to need to win at least some seats that backed Trump by double digits, which is a very tough task even in a good year.
To see how the Tarheel State stacks up nationally, we've published a handy spreadsheet listing the median seat for every other state chamber where we have data. By this metric, North Carolina’s state Senate has the ninth-strongest GOP lean in the country, while its state House ranks fourth—and first among potentially competitive chambers.
The more immediate task for Democrats is picking up enough seats to break the GOP's three-fifths supermajorities, which Republicans have used to override veto after veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and continue to pass their agenda. The GOP currently enjoys a 35-15 Senate majority and a 75-45 edge in the House, so Democrats need to net six Senate seats or four House seats to get to their goal.
Once again, we can compare the two maps by looking at Trump's 29th-best Senate seat and 71st-best House seat; this gives us an idea of the kind of seat Democrats need to capture to break the GOP’s supermajorities. There was no real changer in either chamber: Under both the old and new Senate maps, the 29th-best seat supported Trump 51-46; under the old House map, the 71st seat backed Trump 51-45, while he carried it 52-47 under the new lines—scarcely any better.
Nevertheless, while the new maps still aren't great for Democrats, they may still do better in 2018 thanks to them. A number of Republican legislators will be running in redrawn seats that are home to many voters who are new to them (and vice-versa), so they may not benefit as much from the advantages of incumbency. Senate Democrats are also all but guaranteed to pick up the redrawn 16th District, an open seat that backed Clinton 58-40. Therefore, as long as they defend all of their incumbents (the reddest Democratic-held Senate seat went for Clinton 52-46), they'll be able to concentrate on flipping five seats instead of six.
Redistricting has also required us to perform a little housekeeping. Candidate filing closed in North Carolina a few months ago, so in our spreadsheets, we’ve assigned every state legislator who is seeking re-election to the district they’re campaigning for. In the Senate, a pair of Republicans are running for the same seat in two instances, so we list them both as the incumbents. Conversely, any seats without an incumbent running for them are listed as such.
However, we still assigned a party to every open seat in order to reflect the GOP’s current 35-15 Senate majority and 75-45 House majority. To figure out which party holds each open seat, we looked through the incumbents who are not running for re-election and assigned them each to an open seat for our legislative open seat tracker, which is the same approach we took for assigning retiring congressmen to Pennsylvania’s new congressional map; each open seat is “held” by the party of its retiring incumbent. In a few cases, we had no choice but to assign certain incumbents to a new seat that doesn’t overlap with the seat they hold now; in these situations, we gave those incumbents the seat closest to their current district that didn’t otherwise have a legislator assigned to it.
Under this formula, we’ve wound up with three GOP-held Senate seats that Clinton won and no Democrats in Trump territory. In the House, five Democrats represent Trump seats and an equal number of Republicans hold Clinton districts. Under the old map, four Senate Republicans represented Clinton districts, while in the lower chamber, there were three Clinton Republicans and four Trump Democrats (a fifth House member, William Brisson, won in 2016 as a Democrat in a Trump seat, but switched parties last year).
For the rest of our presidential results by legislative district, you can find our master list of states here, and you can also find all our data from 2016 and past cycles here.