Former Governor Roy Cooper drew a standing ovation from North Carolina Democrats as he teased his upcoming Senate run at a fundraiser on Saturday, June 26, 2025. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)
North Carolina Democrats’ hopes for 2026 — to flip a U.S. Senate seat, end the Republican party’s supermajority in the state House and strike back against a new congressional map that heavily favors the GOP — got a boost Tuesday after the Democratic party swept statewide races in Virginia, New Jersey and Georgia. But what do those wins really mean for the state’s midterm elections in 2026?
In interviews with NC Newsline, political scientists around the state said the major wins by Democrats could pave the way for U.S. Senate and other statewide wins in North Carolina next year, though much can still change, and congressional and General Assembly districts favoring Republicans will be challenging to surmount even if Democrats win a large share of the vote overall.
They attributed the big night to dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump, particularly over the ongoing government shutdown, which more voters blame on Republicans than Democrats. But they also stressed that the issues on voters’ minds could change drastically by the time of next year’s elections.
“A year out is a very long time in politics, but generally, things tend to solidify in an election year by late summer, early fall,” said Michael Bitzer, professor of politics and history at Catawba College. “Democrats had a very good evening, and that lays a foundation for building a really good evening a year from now in ’26.”
Democratic victories in statewide races
In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the governor’s race by a margin of 55% to her opponent’s 45%. In New Jersey, Democratic nominee for governor Mikie Sherill won 56% to 43%. Both candidates significantly outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris’s margin of victory, which was about 6% in both states.
Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, gives her victory speech on Nov. 4 in Richmond. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)“Democratic enthusiasm is high,” said David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College. “What I saw in terms of the results was not just the fact that Democrats won, but that they won by double-digit numbers in Virginia and New Jersey.”
Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University, said he saw even stronger signs for Democrats’ chances in the midterms in lesser-known races in Georgia and Mississippi.
Georgia saw Democrats win two seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, the first state-level offices the party has won in that state in 20 years. The margins were greater than those in Virginia and New Jersey as well, with both Democratic candidates winning 60% of the vote. And in Mississippi, Democrats broke a two-thirds Republican supermajority in the state Senate for the first time in more than a decade.
“I think the Democratic gains were real, and they were even more important when you dig under the surface,” Cooper said.
Professor Michael Bitzer (Photo courtesy of Catawba College)A major factor contributing to Democrats’ success on Tuesday was that Republicans bearing more of the blame for the ongoing government shutdown, according to Catawba College professor of politics and history Michael Bitzer. A Catawba College-YouGov poll conducted in October — written and commissioned by Bitzer’s Center for North Carolina Politics and Public Service — showed about 41% of North Carolinians blame either Republicans or Trump personally for the shutdown.
“The popular perception is that Republicans control the federal government — why can’t they get a budget passed?” Bitzer said, though he noted that Republicans do not control enough Senate seats to pass a budget alone.
He added that this may encourage Democrats to stand firm in their budget demands even as more government services lose funding. “It may be the pressure on Republicans to say, we’re the ones who are going to suffer, President Trump’s no longer on the ballot, but we’re the ones that have to bear the brunt of this.”
What the results mean for Roy Cooper’s campaign
Chris Cooper said while much can still change going into the 2026 midterms, the results are good news for former Gov. Roy Cooper as he competes against Republican Michael Whatley for the U.S. Senate being vacated by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
Professor Chris Cooper (Photo courtesy of wcu.edu)“It does show that Democrats know how to mobilize voters, and that the Democrats are, whether it’s angry or excited or excitement caused by anger, they are willing to get off the couch and go vote,” Cooper, the political scientist, said. “It does not mean that this election is over, however. We need to remember that this is a very different kind of electorate than you’re going to see in a midterm.”
The party that doesn’t control the White House historically tends to do better in the midterm elections. Cooper said that’s compounded in this case because throughout the Trump era, Democrats have performed especially well in off-year and midterm elections, in part because of highly engaged, reliable core voters who can carry lower-turnout races.
McLennan said another positive sign for North Carolina Democrats ahead of next year’s Senate race were big swings among young, Black and Latino voters away from the Republican party after a notable shift toward it in 2024.
“Assuming that Cooper needs a very strong turnout among traditional Democratic constituents and voters, you know, young voters will help Cooper, Hispanic and Black voters will help Cooper,” he said. “The fact that they turned out reasonably well and supported Democrats yesterday was a good sign for him.”
Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Unisphere on November 5, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York City. Mamdani won the mayoral election over independent mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo and Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa. (Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)After Tuesday’s losses, Republicans have sought to capitalize on the victory of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayor’s race to paint all Democrats as radical socialists, including in North Carolina.
On Election Day, for example, the subject line of a press release from the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned of next year’s election: “Roy Cooper Would Bring Mamdani Radicalism to the U.S. Senate.”
Bitzer doesn’t think that’s likely to work well in North Carolina.
“I think if any North Carolina voter looks at that and says, you know, ‘Well, I just can’t vote for Roy Cooper because he’s like the New York mayor,’ they weren’t going to vote for Roy Cooper to begin with,” he said, laughing. “Roy Cooper has a very long history in this state. He has proven time and time again that he’s able to win in North Carolina.”
Democrats gain in NC towns and cities
While North Carolina had no statewide elections in 2025, Democrats performed better than expected in municipal elections in the state. Bitzer, Cooper and McLennan all highlighted Democratic strength in races in cities, suburbs and small towns.
First Lady Jill Biden speaks at a Harris-Walz campaign event in Cary on Oct. 25, 2024. Political scientists said municipalities like Cary moved toward Democrats more than expected in 2025. (Christine Zhu/NC Newsline)In Cary, for example, longtime Republican council member Jennifer Robinson was unseated by challenger Brittany Richards. Democrats won mayoral races in typically Republican areas like Burlington and Warsaw, and defeated multiple-term Republican incumbent mayors in Wake Forest, Graham, and Fuquay-Varina.
“What a lot of people took as a surprise is a larger trend of people who live in municipalities leaning increasingly left,” Cooper said. “We’ve known that’s true for a long time for Charlotte, for Raleigh, for Asheville, for Wilmington, but I think what we saw is the same thing is also true in some small towns, right? That just the act of being in a municipality means you’re selecting more left-leaning voters.”
Professor David McLennan (Photo courtesy of Meredith College)That trend has played in reverse in the state’s rural areas in recent years, McLennan said, with voters outside of towns and cities increasingly moving toward Republicans, as has been the case throughout the country. Because most of them did not have the opportunity to participate in an election this year in North Carolina, how they may vote in the midterms remains unknown.
McLennan said Democrats did especially well running on an economic message in this year’s races. “They won on talking about prices, jobs, that sort of thing,” he said. “I think it has to give Democrats confidence going into 2026.”
Whether those apparent strengths are enough to help Democrats win unexpected House victories in North Carolina, however, remains an open question. Under the state’s new congressional map, there are no traditional swing districts in the state — the closest two seats, the 1st Congressional District and the 11th Congressional District, were won by Trump by about 12 and 10 points in 2024, respectively.
Cooper said “it’s going to be tough” for Democrats to win in these districts, adding that the party’s increased margins in Virginia and New Jersey this year still wouldn’t be enough to flip them on their own.
“What the Democrats are going to have to do is to improve upon how much Spanberger improved upon Harris to be able to flip these districts,” he said. “And so they’re just these districts that are resistant to almost any electoral shock.”
Whether the coming year will help or hurt Democrats as they seek to build on those results remains “the great unknown,” Bitzer said, but so far, conditions have proven favorable. “If you want to be in one of two camps when it comes to next year’s midterms, I think Tuesday shows you want to be on the Democratic side.”
“If we see this kind of level of energy and enthusiasm and interest on the Democratic side and it’s not there on the Republican side, I think the size of a Democratic wave could be one that could overcome some of these hurdles that the district lines have created,” he said.
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