Reshaped North Carolina Congressional District Highlights Suburban-Rural Split

One close and hard-fought congressional race in North Carolina will signify how the election fares across the state and perhaps elsewhere.

It pits blue-trending suburban voters outside Raleigh against red-voting rural ones dominated by Trump loyalists.

Veteran Republican strategist Paul Shumaker said the 13th District contest between Democratic state senator Wiley Nickel and Republican political newcomer Bo Hines will be won or lost with suburban female voters.

“It’s two districts rolled into one,” agreed Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist who, like Shumaker, has deep experience in North Carolina politics. “It’s the closest, most swing race in North Carolina. It’s truly a jump ball.”

The North Carolina congressional map has had three different looks in 18 months and faces a court-ordered fourth next year. Virtually every district features a new look.

Raleigh’s suburbs, like Cary and Holly Springs, feature massive growth and college-educated voters. “They’re getting bluer and bluer each cycle,” Jackson said.

Rural areas in North Carolina, Jackson said, aren’t growing because there are no jobs. The countryside’s average age keeps increasing, and its college-educated voters are declining.

“There’s no industry moving in,” partly because companies can’t find educated workers.

“I grew up in the rural part of the state,” agreed Shumaker. “If you went to college, most went to Charlotte, Raleigh, Wilmington, Asheville, and you didn’t come back.”

Candidates supported by former president Donald Trump have a strong advantage among Republican primary voters, said Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina.

“It’s hard for a non-Trumpist candidate in today’s North Carolina Republican Party politics,” he said.

North Carolina differs for Republicans from neighboring Georgia, where establishment Republicans in the large Atlanta metro area provide a counterweight to rural Trump supporters. North Carolina’s biggest cities, Charlotte and Raleigh, aren’t as big.

Each candidate epitomizes where

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