Roy Cooper tells supporters "You have made your voices heard and they were loud"

Cooper’s campaign focused on lowering the cost of food and groceries, health care, energy and utilities, child care and housing

Roy Cooper told supporters in the state capital of Raleigh, “You have made your voices heard and they were loud.” His campaign focused on lowering the cost of food and groceries, health care, energy and utilities, child care and housing.

BBC News also reported that, according to a poll, U.S. voters named the economy and the state of democracy as their top issues. BBC News was also asking voters across the United States what brought them to the polls that day.

Cooper told the crowd that, “For too many people in North Carolina, the middle class was feeling like a distant dream,” while “the richest Americans were getting unimaginable wealth at our expense.” He added, “Today you said this has to stop.”

Cooper also said, “As your new United States Senator, I am ready to take that message to Washington and work to do something about it.”

On November 4, BBC News reported, citing its news partner CBS, that Cooper was projected to defeat Republican Michael Whatley in North Carolina’s race for the United States Senate. The projection would flip the seat previously held by Republican Thom Tillis and mark the first time the state would elect a Democratic senator since 2008. It would give Democrats a seat as they campaign to win control of Congress from Republicans in the midterm election.

Michael Whatley, the Republican opponent and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, was hand-picked by Trump for the seat. He had vowed to enact the president’s agenda in the Senate, fight illegal immigration and roll back Democratic policies.

Tillis announced his retirement from the Senate last year after falling out with President Donald Trump. Tillis, North Carolina’s outgoing senator, chose not to run for a third six-year term after voting against Trump’s domestic policy package, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, in a break from his Republican Party.

After the vote, Trump criticized Tillis and threatened to support other candidates in Tillis’s re-election bid, calling him “a talker and complainer.”

Before his Senate run, Cooper, 69, served as governor of North Carolina from 2017 to 2025 and previously as the state’s attorney general.

Ted Budd, North Carolina’s other sitting senator, is a Republican who was elected to his first six-year Senate term in 2023. Cooper’s projected win would leave the state’s Senate delegation with one member from each party.