A survey of North Carolina voters released Thursday found that 84% of all voters, including strong majorities in both parties, say redrawing voting maps for partisan advantage is “never acceptable” and districts should be drawn neutrally.
Among Democrats, 87% said they were opposed to partisan gerrymandering while 78% of Republicans said the same. Asked whether the practice should remain legal, 76% said it should not, including 79% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans.
Bob Phillips speaks at a gerrymandering press conference in Raleigh, N.C. in 2019. (File photo)Conducted by Opinion Diagnostics, a Republican-leaning polling firm, and commissioned by voting rights group Common Cause North Carolina, the poll surveyed 671 North Carolina voters from Sept. 15 to Sept. 17. The poll included an even split of Democrats and Republicans, with 210 and 214, respectively, while 247 were unaffiliated or belonged to a third party.
The share of Republicans in North Carolina opposed to gerrymandering is higher than that seen in some national polls — such as an August Reuters/Ipsos poll in which only 46% of Republican respondents agreed redrawing districts to win seats is “bad for democracy,” as opposed to 71% of Democrats.
Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause NC, attributes this to North Carolina’s long history of partisan gerrymandering, which hindered Republican representation for decades before being used to their advantage after the General Assembly flipped in 2010.
“It wasn’t that long ago that Senator Phil Berger, the leader of the Senate, was a champion of reform and put his name on six different meaningful, comprehensive redistricting reform bills,” Phillips said.
Berger did not respond to NC Newsline’s request for comment.
Where voters from the two parties split is whether the current maps in North Carolina are fair. While 72% of Democrats and 65% of unaffiliated or third party voters said they are not confident their current voting maps “were drawn in a fair and transparent way,” only about 45% of Republican voters said they weren’t confident, while 40% said the current maps were fair.
North Carolina’s current congressional map produced a 10-4 Republican majority in 2024, even though Republican candidates won about 53% of the overall congressional vote in the state last year while Democrats received around 43%.
The current map replaced one drawn by court order that yielded a 7-7 split in 2022. A subsequent state Supreme Court decision overturned the ruling that led to the evenly split map.
The new poll comes amid a mid-decade redistricting fight spurred by President Donald Trump, who has urged Republican lawmakers to draw new maps ahead of schedule to help the GOP keep control of Congress in 2026.
“Texas never lets us down. Florida, Indiana, and others are looking to do the same thing,” Trump wrote in an August Truth Social post calling for 100 more Republican seats. “More seats equals less Crime, a great Economy, and a STRONG SECOND AMENDMENT.”
In response, Democratic governors have made their own redistricting push in states like Illinois and California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom is backing a referendum to overturn the state citizens’ commission’s map in favor a Democratic-leaning one.
North Carolina Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) waits ahead of Gov. Josh Stein’s State of the State address in the House chamber on March 12, 2025. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)That battle could come to North Carolina, where Berger (R-Rockingham) has left the door open to a fourth new map in five years. “If we have to draw one more map this year, we will,” he wrote on X in late September.
Conservative advocacy groups have used the California campaign to help push a new map for North Carolina. A Club for Growth campaign in the state cites “cheating Democrats rigging maps in California” as reason to redraw the state’s congressional districts for maximum advantage.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Gov. Josh Stein called the prospect of another redistricting fight “ridiculous.”
“So every two years is the theory that we’re gonna redistrict, so we can maximize the political advantage to stick it to one party and enhance another party?” Stein said. “We cannot get into this maximalist political power worldview because it will destroy this country.”
He said Newsom’s response is the right one, however. “You can’t have one side that’s willing to abuse the rules to gain power and then the other side say, ‘Oh, we will do the honest, true, and right thing.’”
Voters in the survey said they support a citizens’ redistricting commission by a large majority, taking the map drawing process out of the hands of lawmakers. That proposal received support from 64% of surveyed North Carolinians, while 12% said they oppose it.
Phillips said he hopes the results will cause the General Assembly to reflect before wading into another round of redistricting, particularly given that the poll is from a firm that Republicans often work with.
“This is just something for you to be thinking about, particularly in a moment when you might be trying to rig a new congressional map when, overwhelmingly, people in your party are opposed to such,” he said.
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