FLIP NC
The Most Competitive NC Legislative Districts ...

North Carolinians deserve fair voting maps that allow us to choose our representatives instead of representatives choosing their voters. The first step to getting fair maps is taking back our state courts before new maps are drawn for the next decade.

In the meantime, we must keep up the fight to prevent Republicans from regaining a veto-proof supermajority in our state legislature.

Here are the most competitive legislative districts in North Carolina that need our support to win in 2026.

FLIP NC
Back (again) by Popular Demand (ONE WEEK ...

Now through July 11, you can order one of FLIP NC’s Anita Earls tees online through a special fundraiser. Men’s/uni cuts are available here, and women’s cuts are available here.

FLIP NC
Building the Blue Wave in 2026

Here in North Carolina, our first electoral opportunity to begin prying back our state and our country from partisan extremists comes in 2026, when what happens at ballot boxes across the state will shape what happens in Raleigh and Washington, D.C. – both in the near term and for years to come.

The great news is that midterms give us a greater opportunity to impact the outcome than presidential years, when the field is saturated with money and activity. And we know what works. Drawing on analysis and lessons from 2024 and 2018 – the last Trump midterm – we can build the blue wave we need for these critical victories.

FLIP NC
6 Ways to Support NC Judicial Candidates This ...

We can’t wait until next year to take action; the time to start is now. Here are some ways you can use your time and/or money to help win critical NC judicial races in 2026.

FLIP NC
5 Reasons We're Pumped to Re-elect Justice ...

Justice Anita Earls is currently serving an 8-year term as the senior associate justice on the NC Supreme Court. She will run for re-election in 2026. Here are 5 reasons why we’re thrilled to support her.

An Interview with Crooked Media Political Director Shaniqua McClendon

While our work on the 2020 elections is already well underway, we’ll officially kick off with our “When We Knock, We Win” 2020 Launch Party at Motorco on Sunday, Jan. 12. The launch party is free to attend, but registration is required, and we expect to reach capacity. RSVP here.

Our guest speaker that evening will join us from Crooked Media headquarters in LA. Shaniqua McClendon grew up in the Creedmoor area, graduated from UNC, and went on to work in the White House and on Capitol Hill before becoming political director for Crooked, a company that was founded by former Obama staffers and produces podcasts like “Pod Save America” and “Lovett or Leave It.”

Check out our conversation with Shaniqua to learn more about her thoughts on the NC General Assembly and Democrats’ chances to win in our state in 2020.

NC SUPER Canvass

This past Sunday, we partnered with a coalition of grassroots groups across the state to knock doors and talk with voters about the issues that matter to them and the importance of voting – and voting the full ticket – in 2020.

Together, 160 grassroots volunteers knocked 2,200 doors and talked with 750 voters in 10 cities – an incredible feat for a cold December day nearly a year before the election!

Of the 10 canvasses, seven were held in competitive legislative districts, and three focused increasing turnout to support statewide elections.

We’re just getting started – 2020 starts NOW! Join us!

Meet a FLIPSter – Llogan Walters

Llogan was involved with her Indivisible chapter in Columbus, Ohio when it was forming and had a positive experience. She wanted to stay engaged when she moved to North Carolina – so she became a FLIP NC volunteer!

She has now canvassed with us about six times and says that on the days she knocks doors, she literally sleeps better knowing she did her part to make a small difference.

Read on to learn more about Llogan and her thoughts on the upcoming election.

FLIPsters Reveal Their Top Canvassing Tips

We asked many of our regular canvassers for their top tips when it comes to knocking doors, the most effective form of voter outreach. These folks certainly know what they’re talking about: They helped us knock 20,000 doors during the 2018 election cycle!

For more tips, go here. And please join us for our Dec. 8 super canvass at various locations across the state. Early canvassing is even more effective than traditional get-out-the-vote (GOTV) canvassing among the sporadic, left-leaning voters we need to turn out to win in 2020, so the time is now.

Democracy in North Carolina needs you!

Meet a FLIPster – Reid Johnson

Reid discovered FLIP NC when his friend (and now his fellow Alamance Leadership Team member) Marshall Botvinick posted glowingly about our organization on social media. Having worked with Marshall before through Environment NC and the Human Rights Campaign, Reid trusted Marshall’s recommendation.

A Durham resident, Reid works as a program coordinator at UNC Family Medicine and is also a musician. He and his partner, Maria Albani, have a houseful of cats and dogs, lovingly referred to as “the zoo.”

Reid has been interested in political and social concerns throughout his adult life. He focused on Africana Studies in college and became more aware of “the history of race in America and how politicians used racism to divide and undercut popular, important liberal policies.” Frustrated at how big money in politics teamed with misinformation in conservative media to divide the nation, he became active in politics.

Read on to learn more about Reid and what’s motivating him this election cycle. And click here to sign up for our Dec. 8 super canvass so you can join Reid in the fight to restore democracy to our state.

Why isn't FLIP NC registering voters?

Some folks have asked why we're not doing voter registration. Here's why:

As a volunteer-run organization led by a small group of folks with full-time day jobs, we started FLIP NC knowing that we have limited time, and we wanted to focus on doing one thing well. That one thing? Getting out the vote among left-leaning, registered voters in flippable legislative districts.

In North Carolina, turnout among registered voters has topped out at just under 70%. That leaves nearly a third of already-registered voters who aren’t getting to the polls even when turnout is at an historic high.

And the pool of registered voters who don’t vote is far more left-leaning than the pool of registered voters that consistently gets to the polls. That means we have a huge opportunity to win big just by getting registered, left-leaning voters to the polls in 2020.

Meet a FLIPster – Herb and Jo Ann Amey

Herb and Jo Ann – a retired newspaper editor and retired English teacher living in Durham – got connected to FLIP NC through fellow grassroots group Neighbors on Call. Over two-plus years, they have been loyal to our door-knocking mission, canvassing about 15 times.  

“During our working years, we did not have time to be engaged politically,” Herb says. “Now, thanks to retirement, we feel an obligation to get others involved and aware.”

In addition to volunteering for many political and voting rights groups, they spend a lot of time with friends, attending cultural activities, and traveling, including frequent trips to New York to visit their daughter and grandson.

Read on to learn more about why this couple is part of the army of volunteers working to break the GOP majority in the N.C. General Assembly in 2020. And click here to sign up for our Dec. 8 super canvass so you can join Herb and Jo Ann in the fight to restore democracy to our state.

, ,

The Court Accepted the New Legislative Maps. What Does This Mean for 2020?

, ,

It’s good news/bad news for NC’s maps in today’s state court rulings. A three-judge panel granted an injunction that blocks congressional candidate filing under NC’s current congressional map and wrote that “there is a substantial likelihood that Plaintiffs will prevail on the merits of this action by showing beyond a reasonable doubt that the 2016 congressional districts are extreme partisan gerrymanders in violation of the North Carolina Constitution…”

In a separate ruling, the same three-judge panel approved new legislative maps (NC House and NC Senate) submitted to the court by the GOP-led NCGA. While these maps are, unquestionably, an improvement over those they replace, they leave in place a handful of extreme partisan gerrymanders – and maintain a clear partisan advantage for Republicans.

Meet a FLIPster – Marshall Botvinick

Marshall discovered FLIP NC through Durham for Organizing Action meetings following the 2016 election. He’s canvassed with FLIP NC nearly 10 times and is heartened by how eager people are to talk about current political events. He offers this advice to his fellow canvassers: “Listen to what the other person is telling you and respond to them on a personal level.”

Marshall is part of FLIP NC’s new four-person Alamance Leadership Team. Click here to sign up for an upcoming Alamance canvass! House District 63 in this county is one of the most flippable districts in North Carolina. In 2018, Dems fell short of flipping this seat by about 300 votes, and it will become an even better target for Democrats in 2020.

Read on to learn more about why Marshall is fired up for the 2020 election.

,

Race to the Bottom: We Can’t Rely on the Top of the Ticket When It Comes to Down-Ballot Voting

,

When Democrats turn out – and vote the full ticket – we win. Our problem? Republicans are better at both. It’s why the GOP was able to take over our state legislature in 2010 and how we got the resulting gerrymandered maps that put us where we are today.

To restore the democratic institutions of our state and our country, we’re going to need to compete up and down the ballot. And the critical state legislative races we need to win in 2020 will be far down the ballot. Now is our opportunity to talk with left-leaning voters about why these races are so important – and what is at stake in 2020 – before top-of-the-ticket campaigns steal the show.

Importantly, we can’t rely on up-ballot candidates to win these races for us. Turnout for down-ballot races can help drive up-ballot voting, but it doesn’t always work in reverse.

,

D.C. is a sh*tshow. Why is FLIP NC focused on the state legislature?

,
D.C. is a sh*tshow. Why is FLIP NC focused on the state legislature?

FLIP NC was founded in January 2017, the week Trump was inaugurated, when a group of friends got together at a bar to drown our sorrows – and to figure out wtf we were going to do about it.

We’d attended our share of Moral Mondays, protesting the regressive, anti-democratic policies of our illegitimate, GOP-controlled state legislature over the past several years, but it took Trump’s ascension to the White House for us to do more than chant and wave signs.

So if Trump is what finally drove us to take action, why does the state legislature remain FLIP NC’s primary focus?

, ,

The 5 Serious Problems with the Republican Maps

, ,

In a 357-page ruling on September 3, the NC Courts ordered the GOP-controlled legislature to create remedial legislative maps that correct partisan gerrymandering in 14 county groupings in the NC House and 7 county groupings in the NC Senate. The Court’s ruling clearly described the nature of the gerrymanders in each area and ordered the legislature to draw the remedial maps in full public view based on non-partisan criteria.

It should have been straightforward to create fair maps that remedy the gerrymanders identified by the Court. Instead, the GOP created a bizarre plan for drawing the new maps, deciding to select as a base map one of the 1,000 simulated maps entered as evidence in the case by an expert witness, Dr. Jowei Chen, and then adopt changes from there. Dr. Chen’s maps were produced as a statistical tool for testing partisan bias and were not at all guaranteed to fix the gerrymanders identified by the Court.

So it came as no surprise that, while this procedure produced reasonably fair maps in a number of county groupings, it left extreme partisan gerrymanders in place in others.

,

Monday’s Public Redistricting Sessions at NCGA Cause Chaos, Concern

,

At both the NC House and NC Senate redistricting sessions on Monday, Republican lawmakers proposed (without warning or clarity) a process for re-drawing legislative maps that is intended to appear non-partisan but has the potential to be anything but. The proposed process will use one of Dr. Jowei Chen’s (an expert witness for the plaintiffs) 1,000 simulated maps as a baseline, narrowing the list to the top 25% of maps in compactness, a criterion that notably does not preclude splitting municipalities. The legislature will then consider amending the selected maps but likely only in very limited ways, according to Rep. Lewis.

Dr. Chen’s maps were randomly generated using standard non-partisan criteria to show the distribution of likely outcomes if the maps were drawn using non-partisan criteria. Dr. Chen demonstrated that NC’s current legislative maps are extreme outliers and illustrated how far outside the expected range the challenged districts fall.

By using as a base one of Dr. Chen’s maps, which were specifically drawn for the purpose of testing the enacted maps, Republicans may be trying to set up an argument that choosing any of Dr. Chen’s 1,000 maps would pass the partisan gerrymandering test—while leaving ample room to create maps that continue to give the GOP an extreme partisan advantage. Here’s why…

,

What Would Fair(er) Maps Look Like in NC?

,

Last Tuesday, the Wake County Superior Court struck down North Carolina’s legislative maps, ruling in Common Cause v. Lewis that their extreme partisan gerrymandering violates our state constitution. Republicans drew the maps to secure a significant partisan advantage in both chambers of the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA), sometimes “packing” Democratic voters into fewer districts to give Republicans a partisan advantage and at other times “cracking” Democratic voters across multiple districts to dilute their votes.

The 357-page ruling lays out a tremendous amount of evidence regarding the tactics the GOP used to lock in its extreme partisan advantage—and issues a strong rebuke. It gives the GOP-controlled legislature two weeks (with a Sept. 18 deadline) to publicly redraw “remedial maps,” directing it to redraw 56 NC House and 21 NC Senate districts. The ruling further decrees that the court will “appoint a Referee to (1) assist the Court in reviewing any Remedial Maps enacted by the General Assembly; and (2) to develop remedial maps for the Court should the General Assembly fail to enact lawful Remedial Maps within the time allowed.”

While we’re celebrating this ruling, it remains to be seen whether this process will bring an end to the NC GOP’s partisan gerrymandering and lead to truly fair maps. No matter what process they use to draw the maps, the GOP knows these districts, and they don’t need partisan data at their fingertips to build in unfair advantages for themselves. While they may propose a process that appears nonpartisan or bipartisan, they likely know what the outcome will be, and their history suggests that they’ll choose a process that benefits them to whatever extent that they can.

In this post, we lay out where we would expect to see a newly expanded playing field under fair maps – and what to watch out for from the GOP.

Meet a FLIPster – Katy McDougall-Collins

Katy discovered FLIP NC through “Pod Save America” (thanks, Lovett!). She learned about Indivisible during an episode of the podcast, went to Indivisible’s website, and that led her to our chapter. She has canvassed with FLIP NC about a dozen times. Her top canvassing tip? “Relax, be yourself, and have fun.” (Check out this video – Katy and her fellow FLIPsters demonstrate how easy canvassing is!)

Katy is a member of the new four-person FLIP NC Wake Leadership Team, which already has three successful canvasses and a happy hour social under their belt (and more events are scheduled – join us!). A Raleigh resident, Katy works in the digital world, “wearing a few different hats working on websites.”

Here, a Q&A with Katy.

Meet a FLIPster – Helen Poston

Helen came to her first FLIP NC event last July – our 99 Days to FLIP NC! event at Motorco – after seeing information pop up on her Facebook feed. Since then, she has canvassed with us about 10 times and recently joined our newly formed four-person Wake Leadership Team. They already have two canvasses under their belt (and more are scheduled – sign up!).

A Durham resident, Helen grew up in southern Wake County and works at Biogen as a manager in the patient services department. She and her husband Glenn are parents to an adorable 5-year-old, Nate. Helen has been politically engaged since the 2008 election but only volunteered a few times per election cycle back then. After the 2016 election, like many others, she realized that she had to get more involved. In addition to her work with FLIP NC, she is the team lead for Headcount in the Raleigh/Durham area.  

Here, a Q&A with Helen.

,

Want to Flip a District? Run a Woman.

,
Want to Flip a District? Run a Woman.

Ask an old-guard Democrat what kind of candidate is the safest bet to flip a competitive seat in the North Carolina General Assembly, and you’ll get a pretty predictable answer: A white man. But the 2018 numbers tell a very different story.

Of the 35 Democratic candidates who ran in NC’s most competitive GOP-held legislative districts, 13 are women and 22 are men (across 23 NC House and 12 NC Senate races). Compared with 2016 results, the women outperformed Hillary Clinton by an incredible 10.8 points! In contrast, the men districts beat Hillary Clinton’s margin by an average of only 4.8 points. That’s a pretty stark contrast: Women overperformed Clinton by 6 points more than men! All 13 female candidates beat Clinton’s margin in their districts, while only 17 of the 22 male candidates did. The results are not quite as striking compared with Governor Cooper, yet the trend holds: women surpassed Governor Cooper’s margins in their districts by about 3 points more than men.

25 Reasons to FLIP NC

25 Reasons to FLIP NC

The NC GOP has passed so much extreme legislation since taking control of the NCGA in 2010 that it can be hard to keep track of all of the damage they’ve done to our state. But hope is on the horizon. If Democrats can break the Republican majority in at least one chamber of the NCGA, a new progressive era can begin in North Carolina.

Here are 25 reasons we’re fighting for democracy and a progressive future for North Carolina. Read our full list of 99 Reasons to FLIP NC, and then share yours – there are far more than 99 Reasons to FLIP NC!