How North Carolina Cranked Partisanship Up to 11

Republicans in Wisconsin and Michigan lately working to undermine the authority of their newly elected Democratic governors are taking a page from the party’s 2016 playbook in North Carolina. They might want to take another look at how that worked out.

North Carolina Republicans’ attempts to cement power—first by redrawing the electoral map in 2011, then by making it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote, and finally by stripping power from the governor’s office—made the state a model of what can be accomplished by conservative lawmakers willing to go to extremes. Those same actions have bred an atmosphere of extreme partisanship in the state, where a voter backlash contributed to electoral losses for the GOP in 2016 and 2018, and allegations of absentee voter fraud unfolding in the 9th Congressional District seem poised to invalidate a Republican victory.