Party parity: a new index shows how North Carolina has shifted from a state ruled by a single party to one that will remain competitive for years to come.

• Author: Hood, John
• Position: Free & Clear

As I write, no one knows the outcome of the 2014 elections. For the purposes of this column, that's fine. What I'm going to suggest is that, regardless of who wins the U.S. Senate race or has the better showing in legislative contests, the rise of the Republican Party has transformed state politics in ways previous generations of Tar Heels could scarcely have imagined.

To see that, you have to step back from current political battles to look at long-term trends in party competition and voting behavior. I've recently constructed a tool for tracking such trends, the North Carolina Election Index. Inspired by a national model devised by Sean Trende and David Byler, analysts for RealClearPolitics.com, the NCEI combines results for local, state and federal elections in North Carolina since 1950.

The concept behind the model is that in our republican form of government power isn't concentrated in one institution or set of hands. At the state level, North Carolina's governors have long been among the weakest in the country in formal authority--and remained so even after they acquired the power to serve more than one term (in 1977) and veto bills (in 1996). But that doesn't make the General Assembly all-powerful. As recent cases involving education and taxes have shown, the N.C. Supreme Court can have tremendous influence on policy. So can the nine independently elected members of the Council of State: lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, agriculture commissioner, insurance commissioner, labor commissioner, superintendent of public instruction, state treasurer and state auditor.

Assessing the relative strength of the Democratic and Republican parties means looking at other levels of government, too. Obviously, the makeup of the state's delegation to Congress is essential to evaluating party influence. But I would argue that the analysis also must take local governments into account. Not only do they make important decisions about a host of issues, but today's local politicians often become tomorrow's state or national ones.

For the NCEI, then, I rated the strength of the parties in eight categories: 1) percentage of the vote won in the most recent governor's race, 2) percentage of Council of State seats held, 3) percentage of U.S. Senate seats held, 4) percentage of U.S. House seats held, 5) percentage of N.C. Senate seats held, 6) percentage of N.C. House seats held, 7) percentage of state Supreme Court seats held and 8)...