The Democrats Don't Have a U.S. Senate Candidate in NC Yet. Is This Out of the Ordinary?

 by Christopher Cooper

The 2026 U.S. Senate election in North Carolina promises to be one of the most hostly contested U.S. Senate election--and possibly the most hotly contested election period--in 2026. The incumbent Republican Thom Tillis has come under fire from his own party and, not surprisingly, from the Democrats as well. 

While I don't believe that Tillis is likely to lose the primary, the outcome of the General Election is much more unknown. The party of the President always loses seats in the midterm year and Tillis is the only Republican incumbent Senator up for re-election in a purple state.

The only problem for the Democrats: they don't have a candidate yet.

NCians divided over Trump, believe tariffs will be impactful on prices

By Michael Bitzer

We've been fairly quiet here at Old North State Politics, but it doesn't mean things haven't been happening. In February, Catawba College and the Carter Center hosted the final meeting of the Commission on the Future of NC Elections, which released a 200-page report on eleven different aspects of what it takes to run an election in the state. I hope you'll find time to read and digest the important information from it. 

And in other news: Catawba just released the findings of a new YouGov survey of 1,000 North Carolinians, which the press release is reprinted in this post. In the survey, we asked a number of current issues and news items to garner a sense of North Carolina's public opinions, as have many other survey outlets as well. 

In this survey, North Carolinians shared their opinions about:

• The approval/disapproval of President Trump, U.S. Senator Tillis, Governor Stein, and the Political Parties in Congress
• What North Carolinians believe will be the impact of potential tariffs on goods
• How inflation and costs are envisioned going into the future
• The firings of government employees in 14 different departments/agencies
• The suspension of military aid to Ukraine
• What should be the top priorities for North Carolina’s state government

I've include some charts to demonstrate the division in North Carolina opinion, especially based on partisan self-identification. 

There will be more data and findings released from this survey in the near future as well. 

Why Thom Tillis Shouldn't Worry about the Primary

 by Christopher Cooper

There's been a lot of attention about the potential for Thom Tillis to get primaried. In a piece for the Assembly, I explain why that's unlikely to happen.  

---

Dr. Christopher Cooper is the Madison Distinguished Professor of Political Science & Public Affairs and Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. His most recent book is Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer. 

The 2024 Election in the U.S. South

 

by Christopher Cooper

In recent decades the United States South has emerged as the most rock-ribbed Republican region in the country, but the 2020 election brought signs that the Republican stranglehold might be loosening. In those elections, Joe Biden won two southern states: Georgia and Virginia. In addition, voters in Georgia sent Democrats to the US Senate, and Democrat Roy Cooper was re-elected as governor of North Carolina. With the 2024 elections now behind us, what do the results tell us about the Democratic Party’s appeal in the US South?

 Gibbs Knotts and I addressed this question in the London School of Economics United States Politics and Policy blog and we thought some of the readers of Old North State Politics might be interested. Please check it out.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2025/01/29/the-2024-elections-how-the-democrats-hopes-were-dashed-in-the-us-south/ 

_______

Dr. Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. His book, Anatomy of a Purple State, was recently published by the University of North Carolina Press. H. Gibbs Knotts is Provost and Professor of Political Science at Coastal Carolina University. His most recent book (co-authored with Jordan Ragusa) is First in the South: Why South Carolina's Presidential Primary Maters.

Analysis of Voters Challenged by Justice Griffin Part II

 by Christopher Cooper

On January 13, 2025 I wrote an analysis of the partisan and demographic patterns of the approximately 60,000 North Carolinians whose ballots are being challenged by Justice Griffin because of" incomplete voter registration." That analysis can be found here.

Since then, Justice Griffin has filed a brief with the North Carolina State Supreme Court where he outlines his case in more detail, along with his preferred remedy. In that brief, he explains that, in addition to the 60,723 voters with "incomplete voter registration," that I analyzed before, he is focusing his challenge on two additional groups of voters: (1) 267 "never residents" and (2) 5,509 "overseas voters without photo ID." 

As a result, I wrote an analysis of these groups of voters--available here. 

---

Dr. Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. His book, Anatomy of a Purple State, was recently published by the University of North Carolina Press.

An Analysis of Challenged Voters in the 2024 NC Supreme Court Justice Election

 by Christopher Cooper

As the fight over approximately 60,000 challenged ballots in North Carolina's Supreme Court Election makes its way through the legal system, I thought it might be helpful to take a look at the challenges to determine whether (and if so, how) challenged voter differ from the overall pool of people who cast a vote in November, 2024 in North Carolina.

Because the analysis includes a lot of tables that can look wonky when put into blogger, I put them in a pdf (accessible here). 

---

Dr. Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. His book, Anatomy of a Purple State, was recently published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Why the Helene/Institutional Power Bill Found a Natural Home in North Carolina

By Christopher Cooper

Update: The veto override was successful, all three "Republicans to watch" identified below voted for the override and two Democrats were not in attendance. Oh, and although it missed the happy hour deadline I identified below, there was a lawsuit filed on one component of the law by the second happy hour after bill passage.

Please see the Time/Made by History piece linked below (and here) for the historical context and an argument for why NC seems to be home to so many bills like this.

Original post below

Sometime around noon today, the North Carolina House of Representatives will gavel into session and decide whether to override Governor Cooper's veto on S 382--a bill that was initially intended to streamline licensing for dentists who practice at medical schools, changed to one that included Helene relief in the title, and ultimately transmogrified into one that allocated some money to Helene relief, and added another 120 or so pages that, if passed, will fundamentally change who has access to the levers of power in North Carolina government.

In a piece in Made by History/Time Magazine, I wrote a bit about the history of these sorts of power grab bills in North Carolina and why North Carolina and other competitive states provide the perfect petri dish for more of the same to follow in the future.

These same themes are also explained in the introductory chapter of my recent book, Anatomy of a Purple State. 

None of this should imply, of course, that the current bill is unimportant, or business as usual. If passed, it will represent a fundamental restructuring of who has access to the levers of powers in North Carolina.

Gender Dynamics in the 2024 Election

By Susan Roberts and Whitney Ross Manzo

Undoubtedly, the defeat of a female presidential candidate in both 2016 and 2024 provides a unique opportunity to examine the continuing presence and nuances of a political gender gap. For example, one of the talking points in the aftermath of the 2024 election was that misogyny played a role in the result. 

Prior to 2024's Election Day, social media was flooded with sexist memes depicting Democratic candidate Kamala Harris as a sex worker, a silly woman who only speaks in “word salad,” and alleging that she was too weak to stand up to America’s enemies. “I have never seen this fierce of an ecosystem organized to carry far-right tropes, stereotypes, and narratives than this election,” #ShePersisted co-founder Kristina Wilfore told Politico’s Women Rule.

In such a negative and hurtful atmosphere, as the New York Times put it, “Many wonder if a woman will ever be president.”

Some Emerging thoughts on the 2024 Election in NC.

 by Christopher Cooper

I was going to wait until Friday (after county canvass) to post this, but these takeaways seem fairly durable--no matter what happens Friday. So, with all the caveats I can muster, here are five tentative takeaways from the 2024 elections in North Carolina.

Bitzer's Early Assessment of NC's 2024 Election

By Michael Bitzer

Yet again, North Carolina has seen another historic, but traditional, general election: in sum, Republican presidential and Democratic gubernatorial. The more time changes, the more the patterns stay the same.

But digging into a 48-hour post-analysis of the Old North State's general election (after finally getting a decent night's sleep), one finds some distinctive patterns and trends that give us a sense of what is going on this year in the electoral body politic of North Carolina.

Here's a first attempt to describe and consider some dynamics that I'm going to be very interested in diving deeper once the NC voter history data file is available (later in December after the election is certified). 

A Record 5.6M+ Ballots Cast, But Not A Record Turnout Percentage

As the electoral saying goes, it's all about turnout, turnout, turnout--and that's especially true in North Carolina's general elections. We'll have to wait and see about the partisan (and non-partisan, i.e. unaffiliated) dynamics at play and a host of other factors, but an early assessment of county-level turnout reveals some stark differences beyond the 5.6 million ballots cast (a record) that set the state turnout rate to 73 percent (two points lower than the historic high set in 2020).