Overview
As in many southern states, North Carolina voted reliably Democratic from 1876 through 1964, when conservative white voters began shifting to the Right in response to new federal civil rights legislation.
The state has trended purple in recent general elections, even though Republicans have won every presidential contest in North Carolina since 1980—except for 2008 when Barack Obama won over John McCain by a razor thin margin of 0.3%. In the 2012 presidential election, the state voted Republican again in another very tight race, with Mitt Romney beating Obama by about 2%. Republicans have prevailed in subsequent presidential elections, with Donald Trump winning the state by 3.6% over Hillary Clinton in 2016 and by 1.3% over Joe Biden in 2020, resulting in the closest defeat that year for the candidate who ultimately won the presidency nonetheless.
On January 6, 2021, one newly elected state legislator from North Carolina took part in the march on the Capitol in Washington but disavowed the violence that erupted there. Later that day, seven of the eight Republican members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation voted against certifying President Biden’s electoral victory. Four of them are running for reelection in 2024.
With 16 electoral votes, North Carolina is in the top 10 most significant states for winning presidential elections. Once Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race in July, polling began to indicate that the state just may be within reach for Democrats in 2024.
Both U.S. senators from North Carolina are Republican: Ted Budd, an election denier and three-term congressman who voted against certifying President Biden’s victory when he served in the House, and Thom Tillis, a Tea Party conservative who is out of favor with the local GOP for failing to jump on the MAGA bandwagon. The state’s 14-member House delegation is evenly split, with seven Democrats and seven Republicans. In contrast, North Carolina’s governorship has been in Democratic hands since 1976, except for three terms (1984, 1988 and 2012).
According to the 2020 census, approximately 62% of North Carolinians are white, while Blacks account for 22.2% of the population and Hispanics 10.5%. Women—who are among the most reliable voting bloc in U.S. presidential elections—comprise 51% of North Carolina’s population.
The state is among eight in 2024 where voters are deciding on whether to amend the state constitution to specify that only U.S. citizens who are 18 years old or older can vote in elections. Congress passed a law in 1996 prohibiting noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and noncitizen voting is already barred in North Carolina under state law.
2020 Election Fallout
Even though Trump narrowly won North Carolina, his supporters in the state immediately helped amplify the Big Lie, discredit the process, and challenge the results elsewhere.
Election Deniers Running for Congress
In North Carolina, seven candidates running for the House in 2024 have spread lies or conspiracies about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election or raised doubts about the integrity of that and subsequent elections.
Election Deniers Running for Statewide Office
In one of the country’s most closely watched gubernatorial races in 2024, North Carolina’s Attorney General Josh Stein (D) is running against controversial, Trump-endorsed Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson (R), who repeatedly claims the 2020 election was stolen. U.S. Representative Dan Bishop (R–NC–9), another election denier, is running for attorney general, and Chad Brown, a county commissioner who has expressed doubts about the integrity of the 2020 election, is making a second bid for secretary of state.
Michele Morrow, a conservative activist who is running to become the superintendent overseeing all North Carolina public schools, attended the March to Save America rally in Washington on January 6, 2021. According to CNN, she is known for her extremist messages on social media, including ones calling for specific Democrats to be executed and Georgia’s Republican governor to be imprisoned for certifying the 2020 presidential election results in his state. She also claimed that thousands of Chinese troops were stationed in Canada after the last presidential election ready to invade the U.S. to help President Biden take the White House.
Election Deniers in the State Legislature
In 2023, when Republicans gained a supermajority in the state legislature, they used it to restrict access to voting, weaken the Democratic governor’s power to oversee elections, and pass a budget that prohibited North Carolina from joining ERIC, a nonpartisan partnership that helps states maintain accurate voter rolls. In ruling on a case in North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the so-called independent state legislature theory in 2023, which would have given partisan state legislators virtually unchecked power to regulate federal elections.
Election Deniers Administering Elections
Many election administrators in North Carolina who are responsible for overseeing the process in 2024 parrot Trump’s claims of a “rigged” election in 2020 or continue to spread disinformation about election integrity.
Election Deniers in GOP Leadership
As elsewhere around the country, Republicans in North Carolina had been at odds with one another in the wake of Trump’s 2020 electoral loss and the reactionary response to it. But they have reunited more strongly behind the MAGA message in 2024.