Redrawn North Carolina District Now Seen as Toss-Up
A North Carolina congressional district that Republicans redrew last year to favor their party is now widely considered a toss-up, according to NPR.
Starting last year, President Donald Trump and his political team pressured Republican-led states to redraw congressional district lines, the boundaries that decide which voters elect each member of the U.S. House. The goal was to build a firewall for Republicans against the historical pattern of heavy midterm losses for the president's party, NPR reported.
In North Carolina, the state legislature redrew the 1st Congressional District in late 2025 to make it reliably Republican. Under the new lines, Trump would have won the district by more than 11 percentage points in the 2024 election. Onslow County is one of six counties added to the district.
The Republican nominee is Laurie Buckhout, a retired Army colonel who ran and lost in the district two years ago. Democratic Rep. Don Davis campaigned at an early voting location in Swansboro, at the southeastern tip of the redrawn district, an area he had not represented before.
On Oct. 20, Trump held a rally in Greenville, N.C., appearing with Buckhout and Jennifer Balkcom, a state representative running for the 11th District. At the event, Trump said House Speaker Mike Johnson had asked him to give Buckhout and Balkcom a special call-out because they were going to have close races.
Spending has been heavy. More than $42 million went to advertising in the 1st District race between Sept. 1 and Election Day, according to an NPR analysis of data from AdImpact, which makes it one of the most expensive House races in the country. Reuters reported that Republican-aligned groups spent an average of more than $12 million in each of four reconfigured House contests.
Across the country, midterm ad spending passed $10 billion as of the week of Oct. 16, NPR reported. Both parties are spending heavily in about 60 House districts where Trump won by an average of 9 points in 2024, NPR reported in a separate analysis of the House map.
Republicans won a 220-215 House majority in the 2024 elections, which were held under the previous congressional map, according to the Associated Press. All 435 House seats are up for election in 2026.
