North Carolina's 4th congressional district is located in the central region of the state. The district includes all ofDurham County andOrange County as well as northernChatham County and a portion ofWake County. With aCook Partisan Voting Index rating of D+23 in 2025, it is one of the most Democratic districts in North Carolina.[2]
Until 2022 the district was represented by 11-term CongressmanDavid Price, a former political science professor at Duke University, who was first elected in 1986, ousting one-term Republican incumbentBill Cobey.[3] Price was reelected in 1988, 1990, and 1992, but he was defeated in his bid for a fifth term in 1994 by RepublicanFred Heineman, the Raleigh Police Chief, in a generally bad year for Democrats in North Carolina. Price came back to defeat Heineman in a rematch in 1996, and has been reelected each time since then by large margins, usually with more than 60% of the vote. In 2020, Price received 67% of the votes (332,421 votes) to defeatRepublican challenger Robert Thomas, who received 33% (161,298 votes).[4]
Before court mandated redistricting in 2016, according to research by Christopher Ingraham ofThe Washington Post, the district was the third-most gerrymandered Congressional district in North Carolina and seventh-most gerrymandered district in the United States.[5] In contrast, its predecessor was the most regularly drawn of the state's 13 districts.
NC-CD4 is currently represented by CongresswomanValerie Foushee, who was elected to Congress in November 2022, becoming the first African American and first woman to represent the district.[6] Born and raised in Orange County, N.C., Foushee previously served in the N.C. Senate, N.C. House, Orange County Board of Commissioners, and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board. In Congress, Rep. Foushee serves on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and is the Vice Ranking Member of the Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials subcommittee and a member of the Highways and Transit subcommittee. She also serves on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and is the Ranking Member of the Investigations and Oversight subcommittee and a member of the Energy subcommittee.[7]
From 2003 to 2013, the district contained most of the area commonly known asThe Triangle. It included all ofDurham andOrange counties, part ofWake County and a small section ofChatham County. The 4th district picked up the mostRepublican areas of Wake County, such as Apex, Cary, and much of North Raleigh in order to help make the neighboring13th and2nd districts more Democratic. For instance,Barack Obama defeatedJohn McCain in the Wake County portion of the district in 2008 by 51–48%, a difference of less than 8,000 votes in between the two candidates.[8] In contrast, Obama won Wake County overall by a much greater margin of 56–43%, and Obama swept the 4th district as a whole by 63–36%. The Republican influence in the district's Wake County portion was more than canceled out by the two Democratic strongholds of Orange and Durham counties, where Obama received 72% and 76%, respectively, his two best counties in the entire state. The 4th district had aCook PVI of D+8, which made it the most Democratic white-majority district in the entire South outside ofSouth Florida andNorthern Virginia.
The district became even more heavily Democratic as a result of 2012 redistricting, in which the more Republican areas of western and southern Wake County were removed, along with northern Orange County and most of its share of Durham County. They were replaced by heavily Democratic portions of Alamance, Cumberland, Harnett and Lee counties. Additionally, the district was pushed further into Raleigh. Like its predecessor, the district is one of the few Southern districts with a significant concentration of progressive-minded white voters—similar to areas aroundAtlanta,Houston,Charlotte,Nashville,Memphis andAustin. The presence of theUniversity of North Carolina-Chapel Hill andDuke University, as well as large African-American populations in Durham and Raleigh help contribute to the liberal nature of the 4th district.
Before court mandated redistricting in 2016, the district was just barely contiguous; the northern and southern portions were connected by a barely-discernible strip of land along the Lee/Harnett line. Court-mandated redistricting in 2019 again reconfigured the district, returning large portions of Durham County and removing large portions ofRaleigh andCary, North Carolina.[9]
For the119th and successive Congresses (based on the districts drawn following a 2023 legislative session), the district contains all or portions of the following counties and communities.[11][12][13]
.svg)
.jpg)
.png)
_(new_version).svg)
_(new_version).svg)
