North Carolina voters choose between Cooper and Whatley for Senate

Two House races in North Carolina could affect chamber balance of power

Voters in North Carolina will cast ballots on Election Day in one of the nation’s most highly scrutinized midterm contests, choosing a successor to Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who announced his retirement last year after clashing with President Donald Trump. The race may lay bare whether an association with Trump represents a boon or a liability in the current political climate. Democrats view the election as a crucial opportunity to secure an additional seat in the chamber and perhaps even tilt the balance of power in their favor.

Facing off are Democrat Roy Cooper, the state’s former governor, and Republican Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chairman who holds Trump’s endorsement. Republicans in other midterm battleground states have sought to distance themselves from the president as voters grow increasingly concerned about the economy and his approval rating ebbs, according to the Associated Press. Whatley, whom Trump personally chose to lead the RNC after he supported the president’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, has continued to cast himself as the president’s ally. Trump has emphasized their connection while campaigning with Whatley, telling attendees at a September rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, “in this election, I’m asking you to pretend I’m on the ballot just one more time.”

Whatley focused much of his early campaign on crime, claiming that Cooper’s policies as governor weakened public safety in North Carolina, though violent crime has fallen in the state since pandemic-era highs, according to state statistics. Cooper, who served two terms as governor before leaving office in 2025, has largely focused his messaging on the affordability crisis, kicking off his general election campaign in March with the slogan “make stuff cost less.”

Cooper raised about $49.6 million as of mid-October, dominating Whatley’s $13.7 million. Millions in independent expenditures have poured into the race. In early October, the Senate Leadership Fund, a major Republican super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, cancelled millions in advertising planned for North Carolina, a move the AP reported signaled the party’s diminishing confidence in Whatley.

Cooper will have to buck trends to flip the Senate seat blue. North Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 2008, and the state has favored the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 1980, except in 2008, when former President Barack Obama won the state by less than half of 1 percentage point. Cooper served as governor from 2017 to 2025. In 2016, he won the governorship by a razor-thin margin while Trump carried the state by nearly four percentage points. In 2020, Cooper widened his margin of victory by a few percentage points, and though Trump carried the state over former President Joe Biden, Trump’s margin of victory fell to just over 1 percentage point. To emerge victorious, Cooper would need to replicate his success in gubernatorial races — winning North Carolina’s urban centers while remaining competitive in suburban counties that typically favor Republicans.

Two of North Carolina’s 14 congressional districts will also be watched closely for their potential to affect the balance of power in the U.S. House. In the 1st District, in the northeast corner of the state, Democratic Rep. Don Davis faces a rematch with his 2024 Republican challenger, Laurie Buckhout. Davis has represented the district since 2023 but faces an uphill battle to retain his seat after Republicans redrew the district’s boundaries to disadvantage Democrats, shifting a share of Black voters to the neighboring 3rd District.

The 11th District, in the western part of the state, features another competitive race. Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards suspended his reelection campaign in August after the House Ethics Committee recommended he be censured for inappropriate conduct toward two female aides in his office. State House Rep. Jennifer Balkcom, who grew up in a farming family and was endorsed by Trump, was nominated by a Republican executive committee to run in Edwards’ stead with less than three months until the election. She is competing against Democrat Jamie Ager, a farmer whose grandfather once represented the district. Both candidates have made securing funding for further recovery from Hurricane Helene, which devastated the state in 2024, a priority in their campaigns.

Polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET. The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in races for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, mayor of Raleigh, statewide ballot measures, state Supreme Court, state Senate, state House and Court of Appeals. About 3.7 million votes were cast in the 2022 race for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina, and about 58% of those votes were cast early or by absentee ballot.

Most North Carolina counties are expected to release all or nearly all of their mail-voting results in the first vote updates of the night, before any in-person Election Day results are released. About a third of counties are expected to release the results from early in-person voting in the first vote updates of the night. In the 2024 election, the first results were reported at 7:35 p.m. ET on Nov. 5, five minutes after polls closed; the state reached 50% of votes reporting at 9:17 p.m. ET and 90% of votes reporting at 11:36 p.m. ET.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it determines there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory, while making clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explaining why. There are no automatic recounts in North Carolina, but candidates may request one if the margin is less than 0.5% of the total votes or 10,000 votes for statewide races, or 1% for non-statewide races. The AP may declare a winner in a race subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.