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Shifting lines, rapid growth make Wake legislative races hard to predict

Many Wake County voters will be voting in a different district this year in the state House, the state Senate or both than they did in 2016.

Posted Updated

By
Laura Leslie
, WRAL Capitol Bureau chief
RALEIGH, N.C. — When voters in Wake County go to the polls this fall, they may find themselves voting in different districts than they did in 2016 – assuming they were even living here in 2016. That is making it hard for even experts to predict how legislative races here will turn out.

Wake County's last census was in 2010. Since then, the county has added more than 100,000 residents, mostly from other parts of the country.

"They’re bringing with them different political and cultural reference points and frequently are becoming much more left-leaning than native North Carolina voters," said NC Free Enterprise Foundation director Jonathan Kappler. "Because we’re a majority non-native community and growing more in that direction, it’s just a very dynamic environment where people are coming and they don’t know these incumbents and they maybe have a reference point from New York or Pennsylvania."

Kappler spends a lot of time analyzing elections data and predicting outcomes, but he's less willing than usual to pull out a crystal ball this year. Some areas, like southern Wake County near Apex, have seen double-digit growth in the past few years, making their political lean increasingly unpredictable.

"Some areas that have been really thought of as traditionally Republican are now a little bit less so, and this is in the context of a very fast-growing environment," he said. "Increasingly in Wake County, it’s hard to cobble together enough reliably Republican precincts to make reliable Republican districts."

In the meantime, lawmakers have also redrawn the county's House and Senate voting maps – again.

Wake County's legislative districts were redrawn in 2016 after federal courts threw out the maps drawn in 2011 as racially gerrymandered. Judges said disproportionately high numbers of African-American voters were packed into 28 of the state's 170 legislative districts to lessen their clout in surrounding districts.

When state lawmakers adjusted the unconstitutional districts, they made big changes to Wake County districts as well. Although only two of Wake County’s 11 House districts and one of its five Senate districts were ruled unconstitutional, state lawmakers basically threw out the map and started over, shifting districts around Raleigh like a pinwheel.

The state NAACP and other groups filed another suit to challenge the overhaul, saying wholesale changes were unnecessary and therefore unconstitutional, but the courts didn't agree.

As a result, many Wake County voters will be voting in a different district this year in the state House, the state Senate or both, and many incumbents will find themselves with less of an advantage.

"You’ve got incumbents running in districts where they have voters who are not familiar with them, both because of the high growth and also because of those shifting district lines." Kappler said, "As a result of that, the potency of an incumbency is minimized."

The redrawn maps, Kappler said, should help House budget writer Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake, and Sen. Tamara Barringer, R-Wake, by making their districts – House 36 and Senate 17 – lean slightly more Republican. But those added Republican votes came out of other districts. House 37 in southern Wake County has become much more competitive, Kappler said, and Senate 15 has become a likely Democratic seat.

North Carolina Democrats are hoping to pick up at least four House seats or six Senate seats to break Republican lawmakers' veto-proof majority in both chambers. Kappler says their path lies directly through Wake County.

"If they don't make gains in Wake County or Mecklenburg County, I think it's really difficult for them to win some of those seats in other places of the state," he said.

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