Cumberland County (southeastern NC/Fayetteville area) is well known outside the region as home of the Fort Bragg military base. Less well known may be that the county as a whole is strongly left-leaning. It had the 6th highest vote margin for Clinton in 2016 (behind only the larger cities of Charlotte, Greensboro, and the Triangle area) and will be key in 2020 in races not only for President, Senate, and Governor but also – with new maps now in place – for NC House, NC Senate, and US House.
The old NC House map was perfectly drawn to give Republicans a safe red district in a blue county.
For years, the NC GOP has drawn North Carolina’s legislative and congressional maps to dilute the voting power of left-leaning voters through first racial and then partisan gerrymandering, packing Democratic voters into a small number of safe districts in some areas and cracking blue city centers to combine them with right-leaning suburbs in others. But, last year, a state court finally ruled that the GOP’s partisan gerrymandering violated the NC Constitution and ordered large portions of the maps to be redrawn. With new maps in place for 2020, Cumberland County voters will now be pivotal at every level of the ballot.
Under the new maps, Cumberland County is now home to two of the most competitive NC House races in the state. This pair of districts was formerly drawn as one safe seat for Democrats and one safe seat for Republicans, but under the new maps, both districts are roughly even. In NC-H43, Kimberly Hardy (D) is working to hold a blue seat for Democrats that is now super competitive. In NC-H45, Frances Vinell Jackson (D) is running in a newly competitive district to unseat a Republican incumbent who voted to end the Earned Income Tax Credit for working families and slash unemployment benefits while padding the pockets of the wealthy and corporations.
Kimberly Hardy, Frances Vinell Jackson, and Kirk deViere
Cumberland County is also home to one of the most competitive NC Senate districts: NC-S19, which Democrat Kirk deViere flipped from red to blue in 2018 by just 433 votes (less than 1 percent)!
Patricia Timmons-Goodson
And with a new congressional map now also in place, Cumberland County falls into the most competitive Congressional district for 2020: NC-08, a “lean R” district that Democratic candidate Patricia Timmons-Goodson could flip with a big enough blue wave in November.
The great news for Democrats is that the pool of untapped voters in Cumberland County – registered voters who have not voted in recent elections – leans heavily Democratic. Our analysis estimates that the registered voters in Cumberland County (which is also home to two other districts) who stayed home in 2018 lean left by a whopping 38 points – 13 points in NC-H45 and 33 points in NC-H43! So there is an extraordinary amount of untapped potential in Cumberland to help run up the score for Democrats at every level. Cumberland voters have the power to FLIP NC BLUE in 2020!