This US House district was once a political battleground. Now it shows why Congress is dysfunctional

Competitive congressional districts are vanishing, and North Carolina's 13th shows how. After Republican lawmakers redrew the state's map, a seat that once could go either way became reliably Republican. Brad Knott, a conservative Republican, won it in 2024 by more than 70,000 votes. His predecessor, Democrat Wiley Nickel, had taken the old version with a margin near 9,000 in 2022. Donald Trump received 58% of the vote in the reconfigured district, according to ABC News.

Nationally, swing seats, defined as those a presidential candidate carried by 5 points or less, dropped from 45 to 37 during the past year, following a redistricting fight set off by Trump. A count from the 1970s put the figure at 96 in 1964. Researchers disagree on how much blame belongs to gerrymandering versus Americans clustering with like-minded neighbors, though studies find that without gerrymandering the House would have roughly twice as many competitive seats.

Critics say the result is a chamber answerable mainly to primary voters. Nick Troiano of Unite America says only 7% of voters decided 87% of the 2024 winners. Yale's Ian Shapiro argues that even a wave like 2006's would flip about 20 seats, not 40.

Summarized by PolitiKool from ABC News’s reporting. Read the full story at ABC News →