North Carolina

Democrat Roy Cooper beat Republican Michael Whatley for the Senate, 58.8% to 39.1%, in a state Donald Trump carried by 3.2 points two years earlier. Republicans had held the seat, and 10 of the 14 U.S. House seats. In our count Democrats have won nine and Republicans one, with four not called. The widest Democratic gain was in the 11th District, which Jamie Ager won by 15.8 points. The others, in the 6th, 9th, 13th and 14th districts, were each decided by 2.5 points or less, where Trump had won by at least 14.8. Democrats also won the state House, which Republicans had held 71 to 49 in the law firm Williams Mullen’s election report.¹

Measured against the 2024 presidential vote, the Senate race moved 22.9 points toward the Democrats. Cooper drew 91 votes for every 100 Kamala Harris won here; Whatley drew 57 for every 100 of Trump’s. The Senate vote came to 112% of the 2022 total and 74% of the 2024 presidential vote.

Every region moved toward the Democrats. The Charlotte area, which casts 21% of the vote, went from D+2.1 to D+25.4, and the Raleigh area from D+16.4 to D+39.6. The Winston-Salem area moved furthest, 25.1 points, and changed sides, from R+15.7 to D+9.4; so did the Wilmington area and the smaller metro areas. The Durham area, which started at D+46.1, moved least, 16.6 points. The small towns and rural counties, with 21% of the vote, stayed Republican, by 4.4 points where the margin had been 25.3.

Johnston County, in the Raleigh metro area, is the largest of the 22 counties that voted for Trump in 2024 and for Cooper this year. It went from R+21.5 to D+6.2 on 89,195 votes. The two largest counties, Wake County and Mecklenburg County, moved 21.8 and 20.7 points, to D+47.3 and D+53.6. No county moved toward the Republicans.

Government stays divided, on new terms. Democrats won the state House for the first time since 2010, which gives Democratic Gov. Josh Stein a chamber that can sustain his vetoes. Republicans, who held both chambers, keep an unofficial 26-to-24 majority in the Senate.^{2, 3} They went in with 30 of 50 Senate seats, exactly the three-fifths an override takes, and lost four.^{1, 3, 4} In the House, our count has 71 Democrats, 48 Republicans and one unaffiliated member, as Williams Mullen does; a Nelson Mullins table has one fewer Democrat. Seventy-one is one short of three-fifths of the chamber, which the unaffiliated member-elect, April Montgomery, could supply, Nelson Mullins notes.^{1, 2} All 18 legislative incumbents who lost were Republicans.³

The new majority does not take over until January. The current legislature serves until December 31, with a veto-proof Republican majority in the Senate and what Republicans call a working supermajority in the House, and is scheduled to return on November 16 for a lame-duck session. As of November 11 its leaders had released no agenda, WUNC reported. Rep. Robert Reives, the House Democratic leader and incoming speaker, said a session like those that followed past elections would signal no interest in working with his caucus. “I don’t want business as usual,” he said.⁵ He has named oversight of private-school vouchers and the decriminalization of marijuana among the issues the House may take up.⁶

The House result also changes who can draw maps. The General Assembly draws the legislative and congressional districts by bill, and the constitution exempts those bills from the governor’s veto: they become law once each house has passed them.⁴ From January a map needs a Democratic House and the Senate to agree. Elections are run by the State Board of Elections, whose members the state auditor appoints from lists submitted by the chairs of the two largest parties.⁷

An amendment the General Assembly sends to the voters takes effect if a majority of the votes cast on it are in favor.⁸ All three on the ballot passed. One lowers the highest income tax rate the constitution allows from 7% to 3.5%, starting with the 2027 tax year, and drew 61.9% yes. Another extends the photo identification requirement to every method of voting, including by mail, and drew 59.6%. The last, with 60.4%, requires the legislature to pass laws limiting increases in local governments’ property tax levies.^{1, 2, 3}

Democratic Justice Anita Earls won a second eight-year term on the state Supreme Court over Republican Sarah Stevens.² In Raleigh, Mayor Janet Cowell won a second term, the first for the office to run four years in place of two. “I hope we have a very productive next four years,” she said on election night.⁹ In Wake County, former U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel, a Democrat, faced no opponent for district attorney and takes the office next year.^{5, 10}

Wake County voters also filled four of the nine seats on the board of the state’s largest public school district, electing Jasmine Zavala, Christina Gordon, Maddie Segal and Tyler Swanson, and approved a $680 million school bond.¹¹ In Asheville, council member Kim Roney defeated Mayor Esther Manheimer by roughly 7,000 votes in unofficial results, which gives the city its first new mayor in 13 years.¹²

Republicans kept one of the two chambers they held, by the unofficial count, and their majorities on the state Supreme Court, 5-2, and the Court of Appeals, 12-3, though Democrats won every appellate race on the ballot.² Of the 10 U.S. House seats they held, our count has called one for them: the 8th District, which Mark Harris won by 1.7 points where Trump had won by 19.1. In the Senate race 56 of the state’s 100 counties still voted Republican. All three amendments the Republican legislature sent to the ballot passed.^{2, 3}

Republican Ted Budd’s Senate seat is next on the ballot, in 2028, in a state that voted R+3.2 for president in 2024 and D+19.7 for Senate this year. The governorship is on the ballot the same year: the constitution sets the election every four years, and no one may be elected to more than two consecutive terms.¹³ State Court Report writes that ideological control of the state Supreme Court will also be before voters in 2028.¹⁴

All four uncalled U.S. House races are within a point in our count. In the 3rd District, Democrat Raymond Smith leads Republican Rep. Greg Murphy by 0.1 points. Murphy led until provisional ballots were counted on November 10 and, WUNC reported, conceded the next morning.^{15, 16} In the 5th, Democrat Chuck Hubbard leads Rep. Virginia Foxx, an 11-term Republican, by 0.1. Republicans David Rouzer and Pat Harrigan lead in the 7th and 10th. Recount requests are due by noon on November 17, and the State Board of Elections certifies the results on November 24.¹⁶

The state Senate majority rests on District 24, where Republican Sen. Danny Britt’s lead of fewer than 300 votes is inside the recount margin. A Britt loss would tie the chamber 25-25, with Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt holding the tie-breaking vote, Nelson Mullins writes.^{1, 2}