January 22, 2026
Contributed by Ed Gorman
Key Points: Starting with 5 apportioned seats in 1789, North Carolina has grown to 14 congressional seats in 2026. North Carolina has seen frequent, mid-decade redistricting and changes, especially in recent years due to court battles and legislative action, adding seats or altering boundaries. Gerrymandering, the practice of drawing legislative districts in order to benefit a certain political party, has entrenched itself in North Carolina politics. In 2025, North Carolina lawmakers approved new congressional maps for the state, which changed
Background
North Carolina has increased or decreased its congressional districts in the years following the release of decennial census data that showed significant population changes. In most cases, the new districts were first used in elections occurring two years after the census. Since becoming the 12th state in 1789, North Carolina has changed its number of congressional seats fifteen times.
1789: Apportioned 5 seats after ratifying the U.S. Constitution
1792: Gained 5 seats for a total of 10 seats following the first U.S. Census.
1802: Gained 2 seats for a total of 12 seats.
1812: Gained a 13th seat
1843: Reduced from 13 seats to 9 seats.
1863: Reduced to 7 seats (NC did not have representation in the U.S. Congress for several years during this period).
1872: Gained an 8th seat
1882: Gained a 9th seat
1902: Gained a 10th seat
1933: Gained an 11th seat
1942: Gained a 12th seat
1963: Reduced from 12 seats to 11 seats
1992: Re-gained a 12th seat
2002: Gained a 13th seat
2022: Gained a 14th seat
Historical Composition
- 1970s–1980s: Typically 7–9 Democrats and 2–4 Republicans.
- 1995: Republicans gained a majority for the first time in modern history, holding 8 of 12 seats.
- 2009–2011: Democrats briefly regained a significant lead of 8 to 5 following the 2008 election.
- 2013–2017: This period saw a significant Republican advantage due to new maps enacted after the 2010 Census.
- 2023-2025: This delegation resulted in an even 7–7 split, following court-ordered map changes.
- 2025: For the 2024 elections and the 2025-2027 term, the General Assembly adopted a new map that favored Republicans.
Breakdown between Democratic and Republican Seats
| Election Year: | Effective Years: | Seats: | Democratic Seats | Republican Seats |
| 2012 | 2013-2015 | 13 | 4 | 9 |
| 2014 | 2015-2017 | 13 | 3 | 10 |
| 2016 | 2017-2019 | 13 | 3 | 10 |
| 2018 | 2019-2021 | 13 | 3 | 10 |
| 2020 | 2021-2023 | 13 | 5 | 8 |
| 2022 | 2023-2025 | 14 | 7 | 7 |
| 2024 | 2025-2027 | 14 | 4 | 10 |
| 2026 (Projected) | 2027-2029 | 14 | 3 | 11 |
North Carolina Congressional Maps
North Carolina Redistricting Efforts:
While decennial censuses trigger the need for new maps, North Carolina has seen frequent, mid-decade redistricting and changes, especially in recent years due to court battles and legislative action, adding seats or altering boundaries. Here’s a timeline of enacted redistricting plans and when they took effect:
- 1991/1992: Map used from 1992-1996 (12 seats).
- 1997: Map used for the 2000 election (12 seats).
- 2001: Map used for 2002-2010 elections (12 seats).
- 2011: Map used for 2012-2014 elections (13 seats).
- 2016: Map used for 2016-2018 elections (13 seats).
- 2019: Map used for 2020 election (13 seats).
- 2021: A map was enacted but not used.
- 2022: A court-ordered map for the 2022 election (14 seats).
- 2023: A new map enacted after court challenges for the 2024 election (14 seats).
- 2025: A new map enacted for the 2026 elections (14 seats).
North Carolina’s New Congressional Districts:
On October 22, 2025, North Carolina lawmakers approved new congressional maps for the state, which changed the makeup of Congressional Districts 1 and 3 in Eastern NC. The new maps are abnormal because redistricting typically only happens once every ten years, following the Decennial Census. This is the first time in the modern era that North Carolina has redrawn maps mid-decade without being court-ordered to do so. Although the NC Republican leadership maintains that no demographic data on race and ethnicity were used to make the new maps, historically, demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau serve as the foundation of congressional redistricting, and demographic factors such as race and ethnicity and age are used to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act.
The new map substantially alters the 1st Congressional District in northeastern North Carolina, a region of the state historically known as the Black Belt because of the relatively larger share of Black residents. Under the proposed lines, NC-1 essentially becomes the “coastal” district, as it encompasses all of the Outer Banks. Before the 1992 round of redistricting, the district had a similar configuration. However, since then, white voters in eastern North Carolina have shaken off much of their traditional Democratic allegiances, and the proposed NC-1 which backed Trump by 3.2% in the 2024 election, would have backed Trump by over 11% based on last year data.
Gerrymandering in North Carolina:
Gerrymandering has entrenched itself in North Carolina politics. Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing legislative districts in order to benefit a certain political party. A geographic area evenly split between the two political parties can be divided so as to weaken the vote of one group. Since legislators draw districts, when a political party holds a majority they can draw districts that will keep them in power even if the political preferences of constituents change.
In addition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Civil Rights activists won a lesser known victory for voting rights in the US Supreme Court case Baker v Carr (1962). In this case the Supreme Court gave protection to the idea of ‘one person, one vote’ by ensuring states would have to redraw districts based on population changes. Baker v Carr also caused a lasting impact on future state redistricting cases by giving federal courts the right to weigh in on state district cases.
Supreme Court Case: Shaw v Reno:
The Voting Rights Act allowed state legislatures to create majority-minority districts—a district in which a historically disenfranchised minority comprises the majority population. In 1990, the Democratic-led North Carolina General Assembly redistricted the state and created one black majority district, District 1, and another majority-minority district, District 12.
Republicans challenged the map in the Supreme Court case Shaw v. Reno; perhaps North Carolina’s most notorious gerrymandering case. The Shaw v. Reno decision was a landmark 1993 Supreme Court case that established racial gerrymandering as a constitutional violation. The case challenged the state’s 12th Congressional District, which twisted along Interstate 85 to connect African American communities across multiple counties. That decision, followed by Shaw v. Hunt in 1996, forced North Carolina to repeatedly redraw its congressional maps and established precedents still cited in redistricting cases nationwide. The legal battles continued through subsequent decades, with courts striking down maps for various violations. The state became a testing ground for the limits of partisan gerrymandering, with maps ping-ponging between parties as control of state government shifted.
2010 Election Cycle:
The 2010 election cycle ushered in the next phase of North Carolina’s gerrymandering saga. Prior to this time, opponents of the state’s approach to voting districts focused their criticisms on the serpentine 12th Congressional district. After assuming control of the NC General Assembly in 2011, Republican lawmakers employed their Rucho-Lewis plan to redraw both federal and state voting districts. Challengers of the 2016 and 2018 North Carolina federal congressional districts made by the Rucho-Lewis plan argue that the map uses partisan gerrymandering to dilute the voting power of NC citizens.
2022 Election Cycle:
After the U.S. Census Bureau released its 2020 Census results in August 2021, North Carolina’s General Assembly embarked on the process to redraw all three of its statewide voting maps: a Congressional map with 14 Congressional districts; a state House map with 120 districts, and a state Senate map with 50 districts. The North Carolina Constitution requires that state legislative maps include as many whole counties as possible, and so the General Assembly worked from a set of county cluster options developed by researchers at Duke University.
In February 2022, legislators enacted three new remedial maps. While the remedial House map was drafted and passed in a bipartisan process, the remedial Senate and remedial Congressional maps were drafted and passed along partisan lines. The North Carolina Supreme upheld these maps for the 2022 election while also agreeing to hear an appeal on the maps’ validity for future elections.
Days later, the legislators appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it stay the modified Congressional map for 2022 and asked the Court to find the North Carolina state court had no authority to strike down the Congressional map or order the use of a court-modified map. The Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision rejecting the Independent State Legislature Theory and making clear that the federal “Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review.”
The North Carolina Supreme Court heard oral argument on the remedial maps on October 4, 2022. In a December 16 Opinion, it affirmed the trial court’s approval of the remedial House map and order of the Interim Congressional Map but held that the remedial Senate map was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander because it denied North Carolinian’s equal voting power on the basis of partisanship.
After the November 2022 general election resulted in a new Republican majority on the Court, legislators petitioned for rehearing of the December 16 order in this matter as well as the Court’s order striking down discriminatory voter ID. On February 3, 2023, the N.C. Supreme Court granted the petition for rehearing in this and the voter ID matter, a virtually unprecedented series of decisions. On April 28, 2023, the N.C. Supreme Court vacated the December 16 Remedial Opinion and reversed the February 2022 Opinion that had found partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional. In doing so, the Supreme Court held that legislators are free to enact extreme partisan gerrymanders that deny voters equal voting power on the basis of partisanship. Instead of reverting back to the 2021 maps, the court granted legislators’ request to redraw all three voting plans despite a clause in the North Carolina constitution that, once “established,” state legislative districts cannot be redrawn.
Republicans capitalized on the reversal, redrawing congressional maps in 2023 that transformed the previous court-ordered 7-7 partisan split into a 10-4 Republican advantage. They accomplished this primarily by “packing” Democratic voters into concentrated urban areas around Charlotte, Raleigh and Durham.
Summary:
North Carolina stands as both a cautionary tale and potential battleground in what experts call a new era of “mutually assured destruction” in American redistricting. The state’s history has been home to some of the nation’s most significant redistricting cases, from landmark Supreme Court decisions to recent partisan map-drawing controversies, with what appears to be no end in sight.