From North Carolina’s small towns to its major cities, both the number and percentage of voters who participated in the Democratic primary grew compared to the 2022 season.
In the Democratic primary for United States Senate, moderate Democrat Roy Cooper, who served as governor of North Carolina from 2017 to 2025, won 92% of the total Democratic votes in his race against anti-establishment Democrat Justin Dues. In the Republican primary, Trump-endorsed candidate Michael Whatley won 65% of the total Republican votes. In North Carolina, primaries are semi-closed: registered Republicans and Democrats can only vote in their respective primaries. Unaffiliated voters, however, can vote in either primary.
The following map shows the percentage point shift towards Democratic turnout between the 2022 and 2026 primaries.
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Turnout in the Democratic primary was up 33% compared to 2022. (The president’s party tends to fare worse in midterm elections – in 2022, Democrat Joe Biden was in office.)
This primary season, about 81% of North Carolina’s nonmetropolitan, or rural, counties saw increased turnout in the Democratic primary compared to 2022. During the 2022 season, about 36% of rural North Carolina voters who cast a ballot did so in the Democratic primary. This year, that number jumped to 42%, representing almost 17,000 more rural voters who showed up for the Democrats.
Democratic turnout also increased the most in the state’s major metropolitan counties, or counties with cities that have more than one million residents. In 2022, 61% of major metro voters participated in the Democratic primary, compared to 79% of voters this season.
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(Note: Medium-sized cities are in counties that have populations between 250,000 and one million residents. And small metros have populations fewer than 250,000 residents.)
The Republican primary saw a concomitant drop in participation, meanwhile. This year, 139,000 fewer voters participated in the Republican primary compared to 2022. Participation in the Republican primary dropped by 18% this year compared to 2022.
“Democrats appear to have generated disproportionate early energy, both among registered partisans and among unaffiliated voters,” political scientist Michael Bitzer told a reporter from WRAL. “The fact that more than half of unaffiliated voters chose the Democratic ballot — reversing the traditional ‘go where the action is’ pattern – is one of the cycle’s most intriguing developments.”
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