Roy Cooper’s Secret Sauce

Roy Cooper is a bit of a unicorn in modern American politics—a Democrat who has enjoyed broad success and popularity in a state that his party can’t seem to crack in presidential or Senate races.

Cooper has been elected to statewide office six times, five of them on the same ballot as a Republican presidential candidate who carried North Carolina. In 2020, he was the only Democratic governor in the country elected in a state Donald Trump won.

What makes Cooper special?

In his bid for the U.S. Senate, Cooper is positioning himself as the solution to his party’s woes with rural voters, who have become the Democrats’ white whale. Cooper’s background and aw-shucks image reinforce the idea that he has a unique “rural appeal.” The Nash County native mentions his summers working on the farm so often that it seems to be on repeat. 

Everything from the way he speaks, to his often-mocked love for Diet Sun Drop, to his obsession with the Carolina Hurricanes seems tailor-made to say, “He’s one of us.” As Frank Bruni quipped in The New York Times, “You can still hear rural North Carolina in his voice.”

An analysis of his electoral performance shows that this rural image was once reflected in where Cooper won votes. But he, like other Democrats, has seen his coalition shift toward the cities in recent elections. 

The Rural Reality

In 2000, Cooper’s first race for attorney general, 41% of his votes came from counties defined as rural by the North Carolina Rural Center. 

When he ran for governor in 2016, it was just 30%. In his 2020 re-election campaign, that was down to 28%. 

Over the same time, the share of his vote from urban counties rose from 35% to 46%.

While part of that change is undoubtedly due to population shifts and growth in urban counties, there has been an even larger political realignment across North Carolina, the South, and the nation at large, with rural areas shifting away from the Democratic Party.

But Cooper’s share of votes from rural counties didn’t just drop over time; it also dropped relative to other Democrats running on the same ballot.

In his 2000 bid, Cooper’s rural share was in the middle of the pack of all of the Democrats running for Council of State—virtually identical to Mike Easley, Bev Perdue, and Elaine Marshall. By his initial 2016 gubernatorial race, Cooper had the smallest rural share of any of the 10 Democrats running for Council of State. 

Similarly, in 2008, Cooper’s share of the rural vote exceeded Barack Obama’s by a whopping 15 percentage points. That advantage shrank to three points compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and four over Joe Biden in 2020.

In 2024, Josh Stein essentially replicated Cooper’s geographic coalition in his gubernatorial victory, drawing 28% of his votes from rural counties and 46% from urban ones. For all the attention to Cooper’s roots, his voters looked remarkably similar to those who elected the decidedly nonrural Stein, who was born in Washington, D.C., attended Chapel Hill High School, and holds degrees from two Ivy League schools.

Cooper’s success on the same ballot as Trump may make him an electoral unicorn, but it can’t be explained by a unique ability to build a stronger rural coalition than his Democratic colleagues.

Instead, his success may depend more on timing and our state’s long tradition of split-ticket voting.

A North Carolina Tradition

In 1972, Jim Holshouser became the first Republican to be elected governor of North Carolina in the 20th century; Jesse Helms achieved the same feat in the U.S. Senate. Despite these victories, Democrats continued to dominate the General Assembly, causing scholars to remark upon North Carolina’s emerging and, at the time, unusual ticket-splitting behavior.

Four years later, Democrat Jim Hunt won the governor’s office back, beginning an era in which North Carolina voters became comfortable supporting Republicans for president and Democrats for governor.

Hunt won re-election in 1980 while Ronald Reagan carried North Carolina. In 1992 and 1996, Hunt was again elected on the same ballots as George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, who each won the state but lost the White House. Democrat Mike Easley won twice while George W. Bush carried North Carolina. Cooper performed the split-ticket duet with Trump in 2016 and 2020. In 2024, Stein did it again.

North Carolinians have supported a split-ticket Republican for president and a Democrat for governor in eight of 14 presidential elections since 1972.

The 2024 election demonstrated that this ticket-splitting tradition extends well beyond the governor’s race. Voters backed Trump for president and Republicans for commissioners of labor, agriculture, and insurance, state auditor, and treasurer on the same ballot as they elected Democrats for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, superintendent of public instruction, and secretary of state. 

Even the judicial elections were split, with Democrat Allison Riggs retaining a seat on the state Supreme Court and Republicans Tom Murry, Valerie Zachary, and Chris Freeman sweeping the three statewide Court of Appeals races.

Maybe Cooper is a unicorn, but he comes from a state that is unusually good at producing them.

Turning to 2028

Now Cooper—who has never lost a race—is trying to extend that record to federal office. At least thus far, the tea leaves are looking good for him. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Cooper with an eight-point advantage over Republican Michael Whatley. Anything can happen, but the nation’s pre-eminent nonpartisan forecasters also give the advantage to Cooper.

If he pulls it off, it will be at least in part because Cooper has something going for him that no Democratic Senate hopeful from North Carolina has had since Kay Hagan won in 2008: the national political winds behind his back. 

When Elaine Marshall ran for Senate in 2010, it was the first midterm of Obama’s presidency and a Republican wave that Obama called a “shellacking.” Hagan had to defend her seat during Obama’s second midterm, again a terrible environment for the president’s party. Deborah Ross ran in 2016 and Cal Cunningham in 2020, when Trump carried North Carolina. Cheri Beasley faced Ted Budd in Joe Biden’s midterm.

None of this means that Cooper’s success is simply a product of circumstance. Ross and Cunningham both lost in years that Cooper won the Executive Mansion. But it might mean Cooper is particularly good at reading the mood of the electorate. His statewide victories to date fit a long North Carolina history of splitting tickets.

In the end, maybe Cooper’s secret sauce isn’t so secret after all. It’s effective, predictable, and maybe even a little boring. Kind of like Roy Cooper himself.