As the president of the College Democrats at Eastern Carolina University (ECU), Thomas Remington is used to hearing from people who aren’t politically engaged. After all, he is often talking to college students—a demographic that traditionally votes at one of the lowest rates of any group in the United States—ahead of an election known to generate less voter turnout than the presidential race.

But recently, Remington has heard something surprising from these self-described apolitical students.

“Students are saying, ‘I’m not all that politically engaged, but I remember when they gerrymandered,’” Remington said. “It’s been really interesting to see how many people know what the word ‘gerrymandering’ means now.”

The gerrymandering that these students are referencing is the redrawing of North Carolina’s congressional district map in 2025. In North Carolina, the redistricting aimed to give Republicans an additional seat in the US House of Representatives, which would secure an 11–3 majority over Democrats. The effort followed a Trump-led push for states to redraw congressional maps that would favor Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.

The redistricting is one of many attempts that college activists across North Carolina say Republicans have taken to try to increase their majority in the House. But with the midterms just days away, those activists believe the attempts might be backfiring.

North Carolina currently has 14 seats in the House—10 Republicans and four Democrats. The state’s new congressional district map focuses on making District 1, currently represented by Democrat Don Davis, Republican.

Current Issue

November 2026 Issue

To do this, leaders of the state’s GOP-controlled General Assembly moved six reliably Republican counties from District 3 to historically Democratic District 1. They also shifted four counties previously in District 1 to safely Republican District 3.

But Remington said this has made the District 3 race more contentious than Republicans anticipated.

ECU is located in District 3, which is currently represented by Republican Greg Murphy. The last time Murphy was up for reelection, in 2024, he didn’t even face a Democratic challenger.

“Now we’re telling people, with the makeup of the district, if we vote enough, we actually can flip this seat,” Remington said.

Indeed, the Center for Politics recently shifted NC-3 from “Safe Republican” to “Likely Republican,” according to a September 29 report. Early voting tracked by Vote Tracker, a project of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, shows a strong performance from blue voters in District 3.

As of Saturday, October 27, about 47,600 Democrats have early voted, while Republicans have cast around 29,500. In addition, 29,760 unaffiliated voters have cast ballots. This is taking place as voter turnout has surged across North Carolina—up by about 50 percent from the last midterm election cycle.

Remington said he has noticed particularly high turnout among students. “In 2024, we were fighting for every vote we could get to go to the polls. This time, a lot of people that we’re approaching are not only saying, ‘Yeah, I’m going to go vote,’ but, ‘I’ve already done it,’ and they flash us their sticker.”

In Pitt County, where ECU is located, Remington said young people are currently making up almost 8 percent of the electorate, almost double what it was in 2022. Though Democrats are historically more likely to vote early, Remington said he remains hopeful about the District 3 race.

“The Republicans have dropped six figures into District 3 to defend their incumbent,” Remington said. “We’re going to have to talk to as many prospective voters as we can. We truly think that we could be the difference makers in a surprise on election night.”

At Elizabeth City State University, students are watching the other congressional race affected by 2025 gerrymandering unfold. ECSU is located in Elizabeth City, in North Carolina’s First Congressional District.

Malachi Bass, the president of ECSU DEMS, said that 2025 redistricting has changed the way the organization has thought about voter mobilization efforts. He said the organization has been working since the beginning of the school year to register voters and encourage turnout. Bass said that ECSU DEMS is planted at busy locations on campus at least once a week, sharing voting information with students.

District 1 historically houses the state’s majority-Black counties. By shifting six reliably Republican counties out of District 3 and into District 1, the maps have a effect of diluting the political power and voting strength of communities of color. At ECSU, Bass said the gerrymandering has led to an outcry from students.

ECSU also lost its on-campus early voting site, which Bass said many students felt was another attempt to suppress their votes. The polling site had been used by Pasquotank County voters in general elections since 2020. But despite the impact of this loss and the gerrymandering of District 1, Bass said he doesn’t think voter turnout will be depleted.

“I feel like voter turnout will be very high,” Bass said. “A lot of us students are about business now. We really want change, and we really want to make a difference.”

Bass said he has seen a strong response from ECSU DEMS’ voter registration efforts. To promote civic engagement, students organized a march to the polls on October 27.

Bass said he remains confident about Democrats’ ability to maintain control of the district. In fact, Davis recently outpaced his Republican challenger, Laurie Buckhout, in third-quarter campaign finance reports, and the race is widely considered to be a toss-up at this point.

Even though 2025 gerrymandering only affected two congressional districts, it has become something of a rallying cry for student activists across the state. Micah Mangot, president of the UNC-Chapel Hill Young Democrats, said she has been talking to students frequently about last year’s redistricting as part of the organization’s voter education efforts ahead of the midterms.

Mangot said she has used the new voter maps as a way to encourage support for North Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls, who is currently seeking reelection.

“People are getting more and more informed about the fact that our maps are incredibly rigged, and the only way to undo that is to elect Democratic justices to the state Supreme Court to undo the gerrymandering that has crippled this state,” Mangot said. “I think that people are able to make that connection in a much more salient way than they were previously when the maps weren’t as unbalanced.”

District 1 and 3 aren’t the only contentious Congressional races in North Carolina. The state’s 11th congressional district, which encompasses much of western North Carolina, is seeing an unexpectedly tight race between Democrat Jamie Ager and Republican Jennifer Balkcom.

Though NC-11 is a traditionally safe Republican seat, the race faced a massive political shake-up in August when incumbent Chuck Edwards abruptly withdrew from his reelection campaign. Edwards dropped out of the race after the House Ethics Committee recommended his censure for “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers.”

This has opened up an opportunity for Democrats to flip the seat. Seth Digh, president of Western Carolina University’s College Democrats chapter, said student voters scored a major win when election officials decided to approve an early voting location on WCU’s campus. However, Digh noted that the site was not granted without a fight.

It was previously announced that WCU would lose its on-campus early voting site. Instead, students who intended to vote early would have been sent to a location 1.53 miles from the center of campus. Digh said getting to that polling site took 40 minutes and required students to walk on the unprotected side of a four-lane highway.

After bipartisan pressure from WCU student organizations election officials reversed course, eventually agreeing to place a polling location at WCU’s Health and Human Services Building—which Digh notes is still removed from the University’s main campus, but is closer than the off-campus site.

With the on-campus polling site reinstated, Digh said he is seeing high voter turnout among students. Vote Tracker currently shows that over 59,300 Democratic voters have cast their ballots in the District 11 race. Democrats are outpacing Republican voters, who have cast about 43,400 ballots so far. However, unaffiliated voters are turning out the highest, with over 71,000 ballots cast.

“It is very clear that the Western site on campus, even at HHS [Health and Human Services], is doing ridiculous numbers,” Digh said. “While Democratic turnout is slightly lower, it’s still very high, and unaffiliated turnout is really high this year, especially for a midterm.”

Given this, Digh said he is hopeful about Ager’s candidacy, which he thinks appeals to many WCU students.

“We are still feeling the effects of Hurricane Helene, and that has become a huge divisive campaign issue in the NC11 congressional race,” Digh said. “Both Chuck Edwards and Jennifer Balkcom have had enough time to release funding that we know that they have more than enough control over to provide critical aid to the 15 westernmost North Carolina counties. You drive around here for long enough, you can feel that. You can feel that things are not affordable.”

Other campuses have not been so lucky in their polling site appeals. Earlier this year, state and local elections officials denied petitions for a primary and general election early voting site at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s campus in Greensboro.

The campus had an early voting site for the presidential election in 2024. But the campus didn’t have one in the last midterm election in 2022, so elections officials declined to open one for the 2026 midterm. The off-campus polling site is about a 40=minute walk from NC A&T.

But Xavier Jones, the political affairs director of NC A&T’s College Democrats chapter, said this decision, which he thinks “was meant to keep us down,” has ended up “just firing us up more.”

Last week, NC A&T’s College Democrats organized a march to the early voting site, which was attended by more than 300 students. Jones said the organization is also arranging a shuttle service that will pick A&T students up at a nearby church and drive them to the polls. The shuttle will make a stop to pick up students at the neighboring UNC-Greensboro campus.

Jones said the issues of gerrymandering and polling sites have been a reminder of students’ power in the midterms. He said he and the College Democrats are going to continue to pursue efforts to encourage voter turnout right up until Election Day.

“It’s just ridiculous the effort that these Republicans have put into stifling young voter turnout,” Jones said. “It’s about us as a voting bloc, as a community, as a demographic, the power we hold, and the power that I think we need to realize we’re coming into.”