This US House district was once a political battleground. Now it shows why Congress is dysfunctional

In 2022, Democrat Wiley Nickel narrowly won North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District with around 9,000 votes. The following year, Republican Brad Knott won the seat by more than 70,000 votes. North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature re-drew the district's boundaries, transforming it from a swing district into a safe Republican seat.

The new shape carved out Democratic voters in Raleigh and replaced them with rural counties extending to the Virginia border. Swing seats, representing districts where presidential candidates won by just 5 percentage points or fewer, are becoming scarce. As the nation grew more polarized after World War II, the number of competitive seats in the House dwindled.

Competitive seats dwindled from 96 in 1964 to just 37 in recent years. This shift means that most House seats are determined in primaries, with the backing of only a small fraction of highly ideological voters. Wiley Nickel noticed this divide during his term, stating that the biggest difference he found in Congress was between safe seats and competitive seats.

Nowadays, only 15% of North Carolina's voting precincts are politically competitive, leading to a fragmented representation of the country's diverse opinions.