5 takeaways from North Carolina’s elections

North Carolina voters backed candidates on both sides of the aisle in major races during the 2024 elections. They helped send Republican Donald Trump back to the White House, and they delivered the governorship to Democrat Josh Stein in a landslide.

Voters also elected Republican judges in at least three of the four statewide judicial races on the ballot yet at the same time elected a Democrat, Jeff Jackson, to be the state’s top legal official as attorney general.

To people who have watched North Carolina politics, the results weren’t a shock. It’s simply the way voters here operate: For more than half a century, North Carolina has almost always sent Republicans to Washington while also backing Democrats for governor. That trend has applied in nearly every election from 1968 until modern times.

While the ticket-splitting wasn’t exactly surprising, some other takeaways did stick out to political insiders and nonpartisan election observers alike. Here are five of the biggest.

Polls were mostly accurate

Polling on the top North Carolina races was fairly accurate.

On average, polls showed Trump narrowly leading in North Carolina: By 1 percentage point, according to FiveThirtyEight. The website RealClearPolling found Trump ahead by 1.2 percentage points ahead of the election. In the end he won by just over 3% of the vote.

A WRAL News Poll conducted by SurveyUSA in late October found Harris and Trump tied at 47% support among likely voters, with 2% supporting third party candidates and the remaining 4% saying they were undecided. Trump ended up winning North Carolina with 51% to 47.5% for Harris, unofficial results show, with 2.5% of voters supporting third-party candidates. That could indicate most of those who said they were undecided ended up backing Trump when they went to vote.

The same poll found Stein to be ahead 15% in the gubernatorial race, Jackson to be ahead by 2% in the race for Attorney General, and Republican Michele Morrow to be ahead of Democrat Mo Green by 1 percentage point in the race for superintendent of public schools. The WRAL News Poll got the Stein margin exactly right: he beat Robinson by 15%. The margin of victory for the other races polled fell with the poll’s credibility interval, similar to a margin of error: Jackson beat Bishop by 3% and Greene beat Morrow by 2%.

A poll from East Carolina University also predicted a 15-point Stein victory. In the presidential race it forecast a 50-48 Trump win, close to the exact final margin of victory.

“The last few months of polling in North Carolina told us two things,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “It was going to be close at the presidential level, and Stein was going to win by double digits. Check and check.

“At the end of the day, the margin in North Carolina was smaller than the margin of error in most polls. [North Carolina] was, and is, the definition of a battleground.”

NC offered some silver linings for Democrats

The Tar Heel State offered bright spots for Democrats in an election where Republicans made massive gains in other parts of the country.

North Carolina Democrats won key statewide races for governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor, secretary of state and superintendent of public instruction. They also won the only competitive congressional race in the southeast: Incumbent U.S. Rep. Don Davis, a Democrat who has often voted with the GOP on immigration, fended off a challenge from Republican Laurie Buckhout. Democrats also appeared to have won enough legislative seats to break the GOP supermajority, meaning Republicans will soon have a lot more trouble overriding gubernatorial vetoes.

The rightward electoral shift was also smaller in North Carolina than it was in other presidential battleground states. Compared to 2020, Trump improved upon his margin of victory. However, North Carolina moved to the right by about 1.7 percentage points — far less than most battleground states and the rest of the nation.

The only battleground state that shifted less than North Carolina was Wisconsin, which moved right by 1.5 percentage points. Trump won Wisconsin by about 1 percentage point after losing by half of a percentage point in 2020.

Republicans made bigger gains in other battleground states, all of which Trump lost in 2020 but won in 2024:

• Arizona swung by more than 6 percentage points.
• Nevada swung by nearly 6 percentage points.
• Michigan swung by 4.5 percentage points.
• Pennsylvania swung by 3 percentage points.
• Georgia swung by about 2.5%.

In the 43 non-battleground states, Trump gained an average of 6.7 percentage points, according to Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan group that conducts independent political research.

North Carolina’s smaller shift rightward likely speaks to the influence of the state’s urban areas, said Jessica Taylor, an editor for Cook. The state’s largest cities — such as Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte — are liberal and responsible for nearly all of the state’s population growth.

“The influence of urban areas in North Carolina is growing,” Taylor said.

The state Democratic Party also set records for fundraising, with Stein’s campaign bringing in a stunning $77 million, nearly double Cooper’s $40 million haul in 2020 that set records at the time. Candidates for other statewide offices combined to raise tens of millions more. The party also had a more robust get-out-the-vote operation than in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted efforts.

Organizing was a top priority for officials who joined the state party following the 2022 midterms, when Democrats failed to win a single statewide race. The party then handed the reins to younger activists, picking 26-year-old Anderson Clayton as its chair and 37-year-old Kian Sadjadi as its executive director.

“We were better organized and started getting out there much earlier than previous years,” Sadjadi told WRAL.

North Carolina will likely be at the center of the political world again in 2026, Taylor said. Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis will be up for reelection in what’s expected to be a favorable environment for Democrats. Tillis may be one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the Senate, Taylor said, and Democrats will likely invest heavily in North Carolina once again.

Money matters

Republicans won many of the 2024 statewide races that received little attention. In the 14 statewide races other than president — 10 seats on the Council of State and four judicial races — the GOP won at least eight.

But in the higher-profile races that got more attention from voters and the media — and in which the Democratic candidates raised enough money to be able to run TV ads — almost no Republicans won.

In other words: When presented with essentially a generic Republican versus a generic Democrat, voters picked the Republican. But when voters learned more about the specific candidates and their policy platforms, they tended to pick the Democrat.

A major advantage came from fundraising: In the most high profile races, Democrats had more money to spend on ads than Republicans. That gave Democrats more opportunities to make their case to the small group of undecided voters who can make or break a candidate’s chances in North Carolina.

“In general, low-information voters go with the most obvious cues, like party affiliation,” Meredith College political scientist David McLennan said. “The more information that is available to voters, the more they make choices based on that information.”

Federal Communications Commission data shows Democratic candidates ran television ads in seven statewide races: Governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, superintendent of schools, secretary of state, treasurer and Supreme Court. Republicans won just one of those races, with Brad Briner being elected treasurer. Five races went to Democrats and the final race, for North Carolina Supreme Court, remains too close to call.

Helene may have helped Democrats break the supermajority

Prior to the election, some speculated that the storm could hurt the GOP’s chances in statewide races because most of the 25 affected counties were right-leaning. That didn’t turn out to be the case, political analysts told WRAL. Turnout in much of western North Carolina was average or above-average. But the storm may have helped Democrats break the GOP supermajority.

The General Assembly has 170 legislative seats: 120 in the House of Representatives and 50 in the Senate. Since last year, Republicans have held 60% of them — known as a supermajority — enabling the GOP to override gubernatorial vetoes when they vote as a bloc.

As of Friday, Republicans appeared to have secured at least 30 seats in the state Senate but held a lead in only 71 races for the state House of Representatives — meaning the GOP would secure a supermajority in the Senate but come one seat short in the House.

Some races are not yet decided. In a House district that covers Vance and Granville counties, Democrat Bryan Cohn leads incumbent state Rep. Frank Sossamon by 182 votes, or half of a percentage point. But election officials have not yet counted provisional ballots and the race could still go to a recount. Some other candidates might also call for a recount, though their races aren’t as close as the Cohn-Sossamon contest.

If the result holds and Republicans come one seat short of a supermajority, a race in weather-beaten Buncombe County may be the reason why.

Republican legislators redrew election maps last year to give the GOP an advantage in more districts — including District 115, held by incumbent Democratic state Rep. Lindsey Prather. The redraw left Prather with a constituency that supported Trump over Biden by 9 percentage points in 2020. And yet Prather defeated Republican Ruth Smith 51% to 48% this year.

Democrats and Republicans believe the storm played a role in the race.

Stephen Wiley, executive director of the House GOP Caucus, said the storm scattered potential Republican voters and disrupted Smith’s campaign plans. Republicans planned to attack Prather’s record, casting her as a far left liberal who’s out of touch with the district. The storm disrupted the GOP’s messaging plan, Wiley said.

It also changed Prather’s strategy. Once she could get out of her neighborhood, she said, she stopped campaigning and instead started spending all day volunteering at the emergency operations center in Asheville, helping coordinate resources and serving as a go-between for local and state leaders. She also stopped using campaign text messages to ask for donations and instead used them to send out information on where people could find food, water and other help.

“We had so many people tell us we were the only person they heard from in that first week, or even the first two weeks,” Prather said in an interview after the election. “… People don’t like getting political texts, and so we weren’t sure how they were going to receive these non-political, just informational texts. But the response was absolutely incredible. We had people pour their heart out to us, tell us about what they were struggling with emotionally. We had people ask us to check in on a family member that they weren’t able to reach.”

She thinks that decision to use her campaign resources for apolitical storm relief — plus all of the incoming help from FEMA, the National Guard and rescue teams from around the state and nation — also renewed people’s faith in government and probably contributed to her ability to win as a Democrat in her newly redrawn, deep-red district. “That opportunity, to really show people the good that government can do for you made a big difference here,” she said.

Robinson affected some down-ballot races

Prior to the election, Democrats said Robinson’s calls for tighter abortion restrictions — combined with his poor polling numbers — offered them a unique opportunity to tie the gubernatorial candidate to other Republicans on the ticket and drag them down.

After all, many of the state’s Republican candidates had supported Robinson, taken photos with him, and campaigned with him. Democrats spent millions of dollars on television ads pushing out those photos, soundbites and other indications of their GOP opponents’ support for Robinson. They repeated that strategy not just in races like for attorney general and lieutenant governor, but even some competitive legislative seats.

Prior to the election, Republican legislative leaders said their internal research showed that Robinson-related attacks had no significant effect on legislative races. After the election, though, they acknowledged those attacks likely played a role.

Sossamon, the incumbent Republican who’s down by 182 votes, faced scrutiny for continuing to campaign with Robinson after a Sept. 19 CNN report alleged that Robinson, using an alias, described himself as a Nazi and made sexist and racist remarks on a pornographic website more than a decade ago. Robinson has denied the allegations and sued CNN for defamation.

Incumbent Republican state Rep. Ken Fontenot, who downplayed criticism of Robinson’s abortion comments and referred to Robinson as “a force to be reckoned with,” lost to Democrat Dante Pittman by about 900 votes. That House district contains all of Wilson County and part of Nash County, each of which Trump won.

“Robinson’s toxicity, perhaps along with some issues of individual candidates as well, did have an impact on some candidates,” said Michael Bitzer, political science professor.

Hal Weatherman, who also continued campaigning with Robinson after the CNN report, became the first Republican to lose the lieutenant governor’s race since 2008.

“The one where it was most notable, in my opinion, was with Hal Weatherman,” said Cooper, the Western Carolina political science professor. “Even after the CNN story, Weatherman continued to appear with Robinson and Robinson-Weatherman signs remained on roadsides across the state.”

Robinson and Weatherman didn’t respond to requests for comment.