What's Stronger Than a Blue Wave? Gerrymandered Districts
(Republicans got 50% of the vote in NC but won 10 of 13 house seats)
GREENSBORO, N.C. — When the blue wave came to North Carolina, the red levees held.
In a year in which Democrats picked up as many as 41 House seats, including in places as conservative as Oklahoma and Utah, they lost all three of their targets for pickups in one of the nation’s most closely divided states. Democrats in North Carolina earned 48.3 percent of the total vote cast in House races but won only three seats; Republicans had 50.4 percent of the vote and won 10 seats.
The results, which left the partisan makeup of the state’s House delegation unchanged, were as much a triumph of mapmaking as campaigning. The election was held using gerrymandered district lines that federal judges had deemed unconstitutional; those lines were drawn because previous ones had also been deemed unconstitutional.
That only hints at the depth and ferocity of the battles over gerrymandering and voting regulations in North Carolina, where a Republican takeover of the General Assembly in 2010 set off a barrage of conservative legislation and rule changes that are still being fought in the courts.
In this, North Carolina is one conspicuous example of a critical story line in this year’s elections: the degree to which gerrymandering has created firewalls in key states that even a wave election may not be able to breach.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/29/us/politics/north-carolina-gerrymandering.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage