In North Carolina, every county shifted more left in this year’s U.S. House and Senate races compared to 2024, according to a Daily Yonder analysis of preliminary voting data.
Democrat Roy Cooper, who served as the Governor of North Carolina from 2017 to 2025, won 59% of the vote in the Senate race against Republican challenger Michael Whatley, shifting support for Democrats by 11 percentage points. By comparison, only 48% of North Carolina voters supported Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in 2024.
The following map depicts the leftward shift of North Carolina’s voters since 2024. Metropolitan counties are overlaid with a hatch pattern. The shift towards Democrats occurred across the state’s geography, from the largest cities of Charlotte and Raleigh, to the small mountain communities of western North Carolina.
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Forty-six percent of nonmetropolitan, or rural, voters supported Cooper this midterm cycle. During the 2024 general election, only 36.6% of rural voters cast their ballots for Harris. Out of the top 10 counties that had the most leftward shift from 2024, six were rural.
We saw a similar trend in North Carolina’s U.S. House race. Statewide, North Carolina shifted nine percentage points from 2024, mirroring trends seen across the South. Fifty-seven percent of North Carolina voters cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate this midterm cycle, compared to 48% who supported Harris in 2024. Rural voters in North Carolina shifted 8 percentage points towards Democrats.
Those shifts were particularly pronounced in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, a mountain region devastated by Hurricane Helene in 2024, which killed more than 100 people and caused billions of dollars in damage. In rural Yancey County, voters shifted 15 percentage points from 2024. In Swain County, there was a 13-point shift.
Voters were unhappy with the government response to the 2024 flood. Only 9% of North Carolinians indicated that they were “very satisfied” with the government response, according to a WRAL/WSOC poll. This dissatisfaction coincided with President Trump’s talk of dissolving the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which would shift costs to local taxpayers.
Note that this analysis is using preliminary data from David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Some U.S. House races in North Carolina are still being tabulated.
One of those races still under review is North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, where Democrat Chuck Hubbard is leading Republican incumbent Virginia Foxx by a razor-thin margin, according to an analysis of data from the North Carolina Board of Elections by the Winston-Salem Journal. North Carolina’s 5th runs from the Appalachian Mountains of the northwest part of the state and into the Piedmont suburbs further east. The 5th district was redrawn in 2023 to favor Republicans. Foxx told reporters that she expects the recount will last into next week.
North Carolian’s 1st Congressional District was also recently redrawn to favor Republicans, who were counting on support from newly-added rural communities. But Democratic incumbent Ron Davis still beat Republican challenger Laurie Buckhout in what turned into one of the most expensive races in U.S. history, according to reporting by NC Newsline.
The post How Rural Voters Contributed to North Carolina’s Blue Wave appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
