Five Takeaways From the 2026 Midterms in North Carolina

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Democrats delivered a total shellacking of Republicans across all levels of government on Tuesday. While nearly all political observers expected N.C. Democrats to gain ground in the General Assembly and pick up a congressional seat, nobody foresaw the extent of the damage to Republicans.

With all precincts reporting on Wednesday morning, Democrats led in 10 of the state’s 14 congressional districts, ended the GOP’s 16-year complete grip over the General Assembly, and delivered their party’s biggest U.S. Senate win in more than half a century. Heck, even 24-year veteran Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson got booted out of office.

There was perhaps no better summation of the night’s vibes than state Democratic Party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton delivering a gravelly rendition of a Natasha Bedingfield song—“so close you can almost taste it, release your inhibitions”—as an intern pulled out her phone to show Clayton the latest congressional results.

Here are five takeaways from the election:

1. Dems Flipped the State House. What’s Next?

If the current results hold after provisional ballots are processed and any recounts finish, Democrats will have turned a 71-49 GOP majority in the state House to a 72-48 Democratic supermajority (provided an unaffiliated candidate who defeated a Republican joins Democrats).

Republicans are on track to lose a whopping 23 seats they previously held.

Democrats appeared to oust several top GOP leaders, including budget writer Donny Lambeth, Majority Conference Co-Chair Jeff Zenger, and Deputy Majority Whip Timothy Reeder. 

Republicans lost some head-scratchers, too. Unaffiliated candidate April Montgomery appears to have flipped a seat that Republican state Rep. John Sauls carried in 2024 by nearly 29 points. The Assembly reported that this year’s Republican candidate, Charles Taylor, hadn’t disclosed he owned a property that was being used for video gambling; there was no Democrat in the race.

Shelly Headen of Guilford County also appears to have won, even though state and local Democratic Party leaders rescinded their support after The Assembly reported on social media posts she wrote calling for violence against Republicans. It was too late for Democrats to replace her on the ballot, so the party accepted that Republican Rep. John Blust would likely win. While the race is within recount territory, Headen had about a half-point lead with all precincts reporting. 

Democrats down the ballot capitalized on voter frustration with national Republicans, making rising fuel, grocery, and health care costs a central part of their messaging.

So what’s next? House Democratic Leader Robert Reives told a crowd of boisterous Democrats at an Election Night event in Raleigh that economic relief and education funding would be his priorities next year. He didn’t give many details, though.

“Relief is coming on its way,” Reives said. “No more looking at the papers scared of what’s getting ready to happen. No more wondering how many more times you’re going to be undercut and kicked in the gut. You are going to be able to look at at least one chamber in your government and know we’ve got nothing else on our minds except to take care of you.”

Clayton told The Assembly after the rally that the party will push to boost the $7.25 hourly minimum wage and make Republicans defend their economic positions and increase support for public schools.

“We need to make sure that we prioritize public education again in North Carolina, the principles and the foundation of economic development in our state, and make sure that we’re taking care of the people that need it right now across North Carolina,” she said.

Meanwhile, in the state Senate, Republicans are on track to hold a narrow 26-24 majority, down from their current 30-20 supermajority. But to keep control of the chamber, Republican state Sen. Danny Britt of Robeson County must survive an anticipated recount. In a statement early Wednesday, the Senate Democratic Caucus said it would push to ensure all ballots are counted in a race that Britt leads by 268 votes.

Regardless, Democrats see their momentum as a mandate. If Republicans want to get anything done during the next two years, they’ll need the support of legislative Democrats and Gov. Josh Stein.

“Voters are smart, and they’ve had enough after 16 years of compounding Republican failures,” Senate Democratic leader Sydney Batch said in a statement. “Tonight, they did something about it.”

One potential wrinkle: Voters approved two constitutional amendments limiting state and local governments’ ability to raise their taxes. So whatever Democrats do with their mandate, they’ll have to operate under some revenue constraints.

2. Congressional Republicans Got Routed. Who Are These Dudes?

A month ago, there were only two U.S. House races in this state that political observers were looking at seriously: the 1st District seat, held by Democratic incumbent Don Davis, and the 11th District race for an open GOP seat, which featured Democratic farmer Jamie Ager.

At an event in Cary on the first day of early voting in October, GOP Rep. Tim Moore boasted about the security he felt in his conservative 14th District, WUNC reported.

“I’m in a seat that’s not considered competitive, but I’m running a race as if I was,” Moore told the crowd, adding that he was knocking on doors “even though I probably wouldn’t have to if I didn’t want to.”

Turns out he did need to. With all precincts reporting, Moore was behind Democrat Lakesha Womack by more than 2 points in a district he won by 16 points two years ago.

Democratic High Point Mayor Cyril Jefferson also led U.S. Rep. Addison McDowell in the 6th District, considered to be another safe Republican seat.

Perhaps the biggest blow to Republicans, however, is National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson losing to Army veteran Richard Ojeda by more than 2 points. 

And Democrat Paul Barringer is on track to defeat Republican U.S. Rep. Brad Knott. Barringer carried a 2.4-point lead, fueled in large part by remarkable turnout among Wake County voters. The development left national pundits flummoxed.

“Who’s this dude?” MS NOW host Chris Hayes asked his panelists in exasperation.

Barringer told The Assembly last year that he was adopting unorthodox campaign tactics to draw attention to the race, including a 183-mile bike trip from his home in Lee County to Yanceyville.

It could be some time before we know the fate of three other GOP incumbents: Reps. David Rouzer, Virginia Foxx, and Greg Murphy were all within the state’s 1-point recount threshold early Wednesday.

Rouzer was in the best position of the three, holding a 0.8-point lead over Democrat Kimberly Hardy.

Democratic challenger Chuck Hubbard leads Foxx by 99 votes, or 0.04 percentage points. Murphy leads former Democratic state Rep. Raymond Smith by 233 votes, or 0.09 points.

Redistricting was supposed to guarantee Republicans 10 congressional seats in North Carolina and give them a shot at an 11th. Instead, they spread their voters too thin to survive a blue wave.

3. Candidate Quality Still Matters in the Big Ones

Democrats flipped U.S. Senate seats in Texas, South Carolina, and Kansas, so Republican Michael Whatley probably never stood much chance in purple North Carolina. Especially since he was facing popular former Gov. Roy Cooper.

But Cooper was ahead of Whatley by nearly 20 points Wednesday morning, which would be the biggest win for a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from North Carolina since 1974. Whatley took the worst beating of the Republicans running in statewide races, including three Court of Appeals seats that were likely a stand-in for how voters felt about the parties. Democrats were leading in all three by roughly 14 points.

That could be because of Cooper’s popularity, the mistakes first-time candidate Whatley made throughout his campaign, or, most likely, both.

After his campaign shared AI-generated graphics of fake Carolina Hurricanes players during the Stanley Cup Finals on social media, Whatley struggled to name a real player on the team the following day. His campaign responded to The Assembly’s coverage by banning the outlet from covering his events. NC Newsline and The Asheville Citizen-Times got similar treatment for coverage Whatley saw as unfavorable.

Whatley secluded himself to right-wing podcasters and national networks like Fox News and Newsmax, which did little to generate enthusiasm or introduce himself beyond the GOP base. He never pushed to debate Cooper.

Meanwhile, Whatley tethered his campaign to a historically unpopular president and launched a series of ads blasting an inmate release settlement agreement Cooper’s administration struck during the COVID pandemic. Many of Whatley’s claims lacked merit.

The policies Whatley highlighted struck a chord for the wrong reasons. He praised the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, despite residents feeling funds were slow to reach the state. He backed an unpopular war with Iran. He even voiced his support for data centers by arguing that the pushback against them was somehow inauthentic. 

Amid abysmal poll numbers and dwindling electoral prospects, national groups pulled their ad spending for Whatley and redirected it to more competitive states.

Entering Election Day, the question for political onlookers wasn’t whether Cooper would win, but by how much. Within minutes of the first wave of results, the race was over. 

While 2026 was always going to be a tough lift for Republicans in the current political climate, especially against a more politically seasoned candidate in Cooper, Whatley did his party and down-ballot candidates no favors. 

The lesson learned from this race: Even in a state that President Donald Trump thrice carried, candidate quality matters at the top of the ticket.

4. A Supreme Victory, But the Real Test Awaits

Democrats are likely to be a bit disappointed by their timing in judicial elections. Candidates for state Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals serve eight-year terms. This year, all four statewide judicial contests up for grabs were held by Democrats. 

Democratic Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls handily defeated former Republican state Rep. Sarah Stevens. Meanwhile, Democrats went three-for-three in Court of Appeals races. None of them were close.

But the real test comes in 2028, when Republicans will defend three state Supreme Court seats. If Democrats win two of the three, they’ll reclaim control of the bench. And even if they don’t have a good showing, they’ll get another crack at it when two Republican-held seats are up for grabs in 2030.

The timing is important, as state lawmakers will be tasked with redrawing legislative and congressional boundaries in 2030. If Republicans take back the state legislature by then, a Democratic-controlled bench could offer a check on the GOP drawing maps for partisan gain in the 2032 election.

Republicans have stripped the governor of many powers, and—as Tuesday night showed—the current legislative maps make it pretty tough for Democrats to take both chambers of the General Assembly even in their best-case election. If Democrats want to drive state policy, they probably need new maps to do it.

5. NCSBE Snafus Caused Temporary Confusion

Election Day voting went off without any unusual issues. But when the polls closed, snafus started happening. In a number of state legislative races, including in Wilson and Lee counties, vote tallies on the NCSBE site were incorrect, as vote numbers for Election Day pulled from a test data file instead of the precinct reports. At one point, the NCSBE website prematurely indicated that Wilson County had fully reported its precincts, despite showing only a small handful of Election Day votes.

To correct the record, the county had to remove the test data, redirecting the results to the Election Day data file. In doing so, Wilson County also removed the vote tallies for early voting and absentee results, which then displayed as “0” for all races in the county.

At 10:30 p.m., NCSBE spokesman Jason Tyson said, “We are reuploading [early voting] and absentee data for Wilson.” Everything got fixed, but it created confusion for those trying to keep up with results in real time.

In House District 51 in Lee County, meanwhile, an early wave of results showed more than 13,000 mail-in votes, far more than were cast by any other method. The NCSBE said the totals were displayed incorrectly and the issue would be resolved. It was fixed later that night. 

The NCSBE’s real-time reporting of election results is critical. Mistakes could lead to news outlets calling races incorrectly or prematurely, online misinformation, and public skepticism over election administration. 

This was the first major general election administered under a new Republican-controlled State Board of Elections. The problems seemed to be fixed relatively quickly, but we’ll keep reporting to find out what went wrong.