North Carolina's 4th congressional district is located in the central region of the state. The district includes all of Durham County and Orange County as well as northern Chatham County and a portion of Wake County. With a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of D+23 in 2025, it is one of the most Democratic districts in North Carolina.
Until 2022 the district was represented by 11-term Congressman David Price, a former political science professor at Duke University, who was first elected in 1986, ousting one-term Republican incumbent Bill Cobey. Price was reelected in 1988, 1990, and 1992, but he was defeated in his bid for a fifth term in 1994 by Republican Fred 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 defeat Republican challenger Robert Thomas, who received 33% (161,298 votes).
Before court mandated redistricting in 2016, according to research by Christopher Ingraham of The Washington Post, the district was the third-most gerrymandered Congressional district in North Carolina and seventh-most gerrymandered district in the United States. In contrast, its predecessor was the most regularly drawn of the state's 13 districts.
NC-CD4 is currently represented by Congresswoman Valerie Foushee, who was elected to Congress in November 2022, becoming the first African American and first woman to represent the district. 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.
From 2003 to 2013, the district contained most of the area commonly known as The Triangle. It included all of Durham and Orange counties, part of Wake County and a small section of Chatham County. The 4th district picked up the most Republican areas of Wake County, such as Apex, Cary, and much of North Raleigh in order to help make the neighboring 13th and 2nd districts more Democratic. For instance, Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the Wake County portion of the district in 2008 by 51âÂÂ48%, a difference of less than 8,000 votes in between the two candidates. In contrast, Obama won Wake County overall by a much greater margin of 56âÂÂ43%, and Obama swept the 4th district as a whole by 63âÂÂ36%. 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 a Cook PVI of D+8, which made it the most Democratic white-majority district in the entire South outside of South Florida and Northern 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 votersâÂÂsimilar to areas around Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis and Austin. The presence of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Duke 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 of Raleigh and Cary, North Carolina.
On February 23, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court approved a new map which changed the 4th district boundaries to include Alamance and Person while removing Franklin and the parts of Chatham, Vance and Wake.
For the 119th 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.
Chatham County (7)
Durham County (6)
Orange County (5)
Wake County (5)