As bad as things were for Republicans nationally on election night, they were arguably worse in North Carolina — ground zero for a repudiation of President Donald Trump’s attempts to strong-arm GOP control of government that left this formerly red Southern state bluer than ever.
The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee — the organization working to keep GOP control of the House — lost his seat to a Democrat. The former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Whatley, lost his Senate race by a wide margin to former governor Roy Cooper.
The Republican state legislature’s redistricting effort, designed to reduce Democratic representation to just three of North Carolina’s 14 House seats, backfired. Democrats appeared to have flipped six seats, which would turn the previous 10-4 split favoring Republicans into a 10-4 split favoring Democrats. Some races were still very close Wednesday morning.
At one point during election night, Democrats led in every district, and Rep. Don Davis (D) won reelection to the 1st District seat that had been redrawn in an attempt to guarantee a GOP win.
But the wave went even further.
Democrats won control of the North Carolina House of Representatives for the first time in 16 years and broke the Republican supermajority in the state Senate.
“It’s a total wipeout across the board,” NRCC spokesman Mike Marinelli said via text message. “Don’t think it has much to do with the quality of candidates on either side. We’re losing Mississippi. Last night was a total referendum on the president and voters being livid about the prices, the war and immigration.”
North Carolina was a microcosm of Tuesday’s wave election, a once solid-red Southern state that went blue because of a combination of zealous gerrymandering, an underperforming GOP Senate candidate and a Democratic message that appeared to resonate by emphasizing themes of economic struggle and corruption in Washington.
“Hard to know where to begin,” the left-leaning think tank Carolina Forward posted on X. “This was a generational election. Absolutely insane.”
“We knew that for too many people in North Carolina, the middle class was feeling like a distant dream,” Cooper, a popular and centrist former two-term governor, told supporters at his victory rally. “We knew that the Washington, D.C., insiders and the richest Americans were getting unimaginable wealth at our expense. We knew that the chaos and corruption in Washington were hurting our people. Today you said this has to stop.”
Cooper’s lead in polls throughout the summer in his race against Whatley had caused national Republicans to withdraw funding from the state weeks before the election.
Democrats performed well with a combination of demographic groups, and turnout was up particularly in areas with a high concentration of Black voters. The state as a whole shifted toward Democrats by 23 percentage points compared with its 2024 presidential vote.
A Washington Post analysis of the vote showed Democrats performing better with voters across the regions of North Carolina, including with rural voters in a state that was already trending more urban and highly educated and blue. The blue shift, which happened even in areas with high concentrations of non-college-educated White voters, suggests that Democrats have the potential for more durable gains as the state continues to change.
Trump’s tariffs were especially potent with farmers, who have faced the double whammy of high diesel prices arising from the war in Iran and Republican cuts to Medicaid, which also contributed to declines for the GOP among lower-income groups.
NRCC chairman Rep. Richard Hudson (R), who first won election in 2013, lost in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District to Democrat Richard Ojeda, a retired Army major. The central North Carolina seat had been in Republican control since 1963.
Some Republicans lamented that they were overcome by a movement for change that affected every state.
“A lot of this at the state level is out of our control,” Republican state Rep. Erin Paré told Raleigh TV station WRAL. “There’s a national sentiment that’s devastating to Republicans downballot.”
In the 11th Congressional District in the mountainous region around Asheville, Republican Jennifer Balkcom, who lost to Democrat Jamie Ager, called it “one of the worst political environments in modern history.”
But in her statement on social media, Balkcom vowed that “our campaign is not over. I look forward to running again — and taking this seat back — in 2028.”
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