More than $42 million in advertising went into North Carolina’s now-competitive 1st District
Republicans are spending millions on House contests that redrawn maps were supposed to make easy. Inside Elections editor Nathan Gonzales said the redistricting effort had not turned out as intended. North Carolina’s 1st District is now one of the country’s most expensive House races: NPR’s analysis of AdImpact data found more than $42 million in advertising between Sept. 1 and Election Day. The North Carolina legislature redrew the district late last year in an effort to make it reliably Republican, but it is now widely considered a toss-up. Under the new lines, Trump would have won the district by more than 11 percentage points in 2024.
At a recent rally in eastern North Carolina, former Republican Party chairman turned U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley got most of the attention. It was cold and getting late when Trump finally mentioned two congressional candidates sitting in the VIP section. Trump called up Laurie Buckout — whose surname appeared as Buckhout later in NPR’s report — the Republican nominee in NC-01, and Jennifer Balkcom, the Republican running to represent NC-11 on the opposite side of the state.
Trump said, “Come up. The two of you, we have to get them in,” and added, “We have to vote for them. These are two special people. Come on up.” He directly urged voters to support both candidates.
On stage, Buckhout, a retired Army colonel who ran and lost in the district two years ago, leaned into the partisan advantage Republicans should have, calling it “simple math.” “There are more of us,” Buckhout said. “All you’ve got to do is get out the vote. God bless you. Mr. President.”
Concern about turnout was exactly why Trump was in North Carolina, where he urged voters to cast their ballots as if he were on it. Trump told the rally crowd that House Speaker Mike Johnson had asked him to give Buckhout and Balkcom an extra boost because they faced close races. “He said ‘if you could, give them a special call out tonight, because they’re going to have close races,’” Trump said, describing the situation as “tough.” Buckhout and her team did not respond to requests to participate in the story. NPR reported that if the redraw was meant to notch an easy Republican win, it had not worked out.
One recent morning, Democratic Rep. Don Davis greeted voters at an early-voting location in Swansboro, at the far southeastern tip of the district, in an area he had not represented before. As Davis introduced himself to a voter walking out of the polling place, the man told him he was not in his district. Davis laughed and said the mistake had been happening often. “This is my third run on a third new map,” Davis said.
Davis had been a top Republican target through multiple rounds of redistricting. In the latest round, his home county was drawn out of the district and he gained all or part of six new counties. Davis said issues in eastern North Carolina were universal. “You hear so much about affordability, inflation and costs but I believe this is becoming for many about survivability,” Davis said, referring to farmers, truckers and fishermen hit by high fuel prices. “Just how they’re able to make it and survive during these tough times.”
In front of the polling place, Davis joked about his predicament with a volunteer handing out flyers. “I just don’t know how many other ways you could redraw it now, other than maybe, you know if you just start annexing Virginia or something or maybe taking it into the Atlantic Ocean or something,” he said. Adding with a laugh, he continued: “I’ll just swim and talk to the fish you know.”
NPR reported that Republicans and Democrats alike acknowledged Davis was a formidable campaigner, making the race more competitive than the lines alone suggested. Morgan Jackson, a prominent North Carolina political consultant running Democrat Roy Cooper’s U.S. Senate campaign, said, “I think they believed that they had beaten Don Davis with the redistricting pen. As it turns out, Don Davis has always been a tough out. He’s a local politician who runs really strong.”
Starting last year, President Trump and his political team pressured Republican-led states to redraw congressional district lines to build a firewall for Republicans against the historical pattern of heavy midterm losses for the president’s party. “It just has not turned out that way,” said Nathan Gonzales, editor of Inside Elections. Gonzales said Republicans gained an advantage in 15 congressional districts nationwide, but close to Election Day some seats expected to deliver easy victories were not developing as expected and the party was pouring millions of dollars into them. Those races may end up lost anyway.
Gonzales said incumbent Democrats in several redrawn districts around the country decided to stay and fight and now appear well positioned to win. NPR’s related coverage said Ohio’s rural voters could decide control of the Senate. It also reported that Democrats saw an opening at the edge of the competitive midterm map in Arkansas and that independent candidates sensed a political moment that some Democrats hoped was real.
Outside North Carolina, two Florida congressional districts redrawn to oust Democratic incumbents were nearing a combined $90 million in advertising. In Texas, districts drawn to have a 10-point Trump advantage have shifted toward Democrats, and a previously safe Republican district that received some Democratic voters under the new map now appears to be at risk as well.
A Republican strategist involved with the midterm races, but not authorized to speak publicly, pushed back on the idea that the redistricting push had been a bust. The strategist said, “redistricting creates new battlefields, it doesn’t create outcomes.” NPR characterized that position as less confidence than Republicans had projected about the districts only a few months earlier.
Jackson said the results could earn the map changes an unusual label. “I think at the end of the day, this will go down as a dummymander rather than a gerrymander,” he said. North Carolina’s 1st District remained widely considered a toss-up, leaving the party’s effort to turn a planned advantage into a reliable win unsettled as Election Day approached.