North Carolina will be at the center of the 2026 midterm elections, with a marquee U.S. Senate race that’s expected to attract big names given the high stakes for the balance of power in the federal government.
Democrats see a chance to turn one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats blue for the first time in over a decade. They need to flip at least four to gain control of the chamber. Republicans, meanwhile, see a chance to replace retiring Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis with a candidate who will be more loyal to President Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement.
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The results of this race could also go a long way toward determining whether Democrats or Republicans are more likely to have control of the Senate after the 2028 elections, when Americans will elect a new president.
In the last 40 years only three Democrats — Terry Sanford, John Edwards and Kay Hagan — have represented North Carolina in the U.S. Senate. The state’s U.S. Senate races in recent history have been mostly dominated by Republicans including Jesse Helms, Richard Burr and Tillis.
Republicans think they can keep the streak going, but Democrats believe they have a candidate who will be able to turn the tides and flip the seat.
How important is North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race nationally?
North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seats is one of the most important in the nation in 2026 — not only because it’s a rare open seat in a battleground state, but also because most other battleground states don't have a seat up for grabs at all this year. Democrats won’t have the opportunity to flip GOP-held seats in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada or Arizona, so North Carolina will receive substantial national attention.
Democrats need to flip four Senate seats to take back control of the chamber — a tall order for the 2026 elections. North Carolina’s race is the only contest that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report considers a “toss up.” To flip the chamber, Democrats would also need to win in Republican leaning states such as Maine, Iowa and Ohio.
At the very least, flipping this North Carolina seat in 2026 would put national Democrats in a much better position to take control of the Senate in 2028. By the same token, Republicans will have an easier job defending their majority in 2028 if they also win North Carolina in 2026.
Who’s currently running?
Cary attorney Wiley Nickel, a former U.S. Congressman who was drawn out of his seat by pro-Republican gerrymandering in 2024, had long been the only Democrat in the race — until former Gov. Roy Cooper announced his campaign Monday. Nickel is expected to suspend his campaign in the coming days and endorse Cooper.
Cooper, the former governor whose Nash County tobacco farming roots have helped him do better with rural voters than many other modern Democratic politicians in the state, has already lined up preliminary support from other party leaders including Gov. Josh Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson.
On the Republican side, the only current candidates are Don Brown and Andy Nilsson. Nilsson, a retired businessman from Winston-Salem, previously ran for lieutenant governor in 2000. Brown, a Stanly County attorney who also writes military novels, ran for Congress in 2024.
An independent candidate, Shaunesi Deberry, has also filed paperwork to compete in the race. But that filing lists her as living in Maryland, which would make her ineligible to run in North Carolina unless she moves.
Who else is expected to run?
Republican Party leaders are seeking a better-known candidate to carry their standard against Cooper and believe they've found one in Michael Whatley, the leader of the national Republican Party.
A western North Carolina native, Whatley led the North Carolina Republican Party for five years before taking over the Republican National Committee ahead of the 2024 elections. He hasn’t formally announced his candidacy but Trump has pushed for him to enter the race, saying he’s ready to back Whatley due to his views on immigration, guns and more.
Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump had been the top choice of some in the party, but she bowed out following reports that Cooper would run.
Why is the seat open?
Tillis isn’t running for reelection, a decision he made after Trump threatened to back another Republican in the race when Tillis publicly opposed Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Tillis took issue with the bill’s Medicaid cuts. It could kick nearly 700,000 North Carolinians off their insurance, something Tillis said would lead to rural hospitals shutting down.
Tillis has long been on thin ice with the GOP base during the Trump era — he’s been seen as an establishment Republican, not a MAGA true believer — and he may have faced considerable difficulty against a Trump-backed challenger in a primary election. The state party in 2023 voted to censure him for going against the party's views on key issues such as supporting federal legislation codifying gay marriage.
With no incumbent in the race, who are the front-runners?
There's still months until the candidate filing deadline in December, so more politicians could still jump into the race. But at least now, Cooper and Whatley are the heavy favorites to win their respective primaries, due to their connections and fundraising prowess.
Is it too early to know who might win the general election?
The Cook Political Report lists the race as a tossup that doesn’t favor either party. The group had rated the seat as “lean Republican” until Tillis dropped out.
North Carolina is typically a Republican-leaning state in federal races such as for president and Senate, even if only by a small amount. But Cooper brings several advantages to the table for Democrats. So does the timing of the election, since midterm elections like the one in 2026 typically favor the party that doesn’t control the White House. Cooper also has a proven record, winning high-profile races for governor in 2016 and 2020 when voters statewide also backed Trump for president and Republicans for U.S. Senate.
Whatley’s strength is as an insider — a strategist, a fundraiser — who has deep relationships with the party’s powerbrokers, said David McLennan, a political scientist at Meredith College in Raleigh. But he doesn’t have experience as a candidate himself. “Cooper's a seasoned veteran with lots of connections, money, that sort of thing,” McLennan said. “So right now, if those are the two finalists for the Senate position, you'd have to say Cooper's a slight favorite in a very divided state.”
What will Republicans focus their campaign on?
Trump and other Republicans have focused heavily on gender and racial issues in recent years, two topics they might attack Cooper over now: In 2016 Cooper became governor in a race that focused heavily on his support for transgender rights. And in 2020 Cooper supported the Black Lives Matter movement and started a racial justice task force that urged various policing and criminal justice reforms.
Polls show Cooper was a broadly popular politician while governor, but he has faced criticism for the state’s slow response to two massive hurricanes, Matthew and Florence, that hit in 2016 and 2018. With the shadow of 2024’s Hurricane Helene still likely to be looming in the 2026 race, those earlier disaster responses could also feature prominently in GOP ads.
Trump has also made strict immigration enforcement a key part of his second term in office, and he has promoted Whatley as sharing similarly tough views on immigration. Whatley would also be expected to support Trump’s positions on tax policy, law enforcement and gun rights.
Republicans on Saturday painted Cooper as a career politician who sides with the radical left. “We’ve seen enough of elitist Roy Cooper and politicians like him who make their living off taxpayers while supporting policies making life harder and unaffordable for North Carolina families,” North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Matt Mercer said in a statement after Cooper gave a speech in Raleigh.
What will Democrats campaign on?
Health care will be a major theme for Democrats to focus on, especially since the main focus — Medicaid expansion — was a bipartisan issue until Trump pushed Congress to slash it. It’s also the reason the seat is open in the first place, considering Tillis’s opposition to Trump’s plans.
Cooper spent years pushing for the state’s Republican-led legislature to approve Medicaid expansion, and they finally did in 2023. Since then it has been rural, Republican-leaning counties that have benefitted the most from expansion — and which will be hurt hardest by its elimination by Trump’s budget, Tillis, Cooper and others say North Carolina’s economy will lose at least $40 billion a year because of the Medicaid cuts, a number that could grow if hospitals shut down.
Education and the economy are also frequent topics for successful political campaigns, and Cooper could focus on Trump’s tariffs and other trade war policies, and the effect they’re having on inflation, as well as on national Republicans’ efforts to cut billions of dollars for public schools and colleges. Cooper also presided over significant corporate expansions in the state. The state added more than 640,000 jobs during his time in office.
Cooper hit on many of those topics during his speech in Raleigh on Saturday night. “Look at what's happening in Washington,” Cooper told North Carolina Democrats who gathered at the state party’s annual Unity Dinner. “They are running up our debt. They are disrespecting our veterans. They're cutting help for the hungry, and they're ripping away health care from millions of people, all to give tax breaks to the millionaires and the billionaires. And it's not right.”
What if I don’t like either major party?
There’s likely to be at least one third-party candidate, and maybe more, if recent history is any indication. Tillis’ victories in 2016 and 2020 each came despite him winning less than 50% of the vote each time, due to Libertarian candidates jumping into those races. A key factor this year will be exactly what kind of third-party challengers emerge, and whether they’re more likely to siphon votes away from Democrats or from Republicans.
How important will fundraising be in this race?
The race is expected to be one of the most expensive in the country. North Carolinians can expect to be bombarded with TV ads, social media campaigns and more. Tillis’ 2020 win was the most expensive US Senate race in history at the time, not just for North Carolina but for the whole country. This 2026 race will very likely eclipse the $280 million that the candidates and outside groups spent in 2020.
Cooper has raised tens of millions of dollars in his runs for governor and has remained an active fundraiser even since leaving office. Whatley has no experience fundraising as a candidate but, because of his work leading the RNC, should have every major conservative donor in the country on speed-dial.
What happened last time a Senate seat was open in North Carolina?
The last time North Carolina had an open U.S. Senate seat, in 2022, Republican Ted Budd defeated Democrat Cheri Beasley by a relatively comfortable margin of 51% to 47%. That year was a midterm that favored Republicans, unlike 2026.
That seat was empty because former U.S. Sen. Richard Burr declined to seek reelection. Like Tillis, Burr had also never fully embraced Trumpism and in 2021 was one of a small number of Republicans to vote to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. His replacement, Budd, has been enthusiastically pro-Trump.
What happens next?
Cooper and Whatley are expected to announce in the coming days, but they or other candidates have until December to make up their minds about getting into (or out of) the race. Then the primary elections are scheduled to be held in March 2026, followed by the general election in November.
Could the U.S. Senate race have a down-ballot impact?
The Senate election is the biggest race on the 2026 ballot but far from the only impactful one.
A key U.S. House race in northeastern North Carolina will feature Republicans trying to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis, a moderate who represents a conservative-leaning seat. If Davis holds on, he could help Democrats take back control of the U.S. House, since the party is expecting to flip a handful of GOP-held seats in other states.
Another Democrat hoping to fend off challengers will be North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls, one of two Democrats on what’s currently a 5-2 GOP-majority court. But three of those five Republicans are up for reelection in 2028, so an Earls victory in 2026 would improve Democrats’ chances of taking back the court in 2028 ahead of the next round of redistricting.
But Democrats aren’t only on the defensive down-ballot: Most state legislative races won’t be competitive, but a few could be make-or-break for Republicans trying to hold onto enough power to override Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s veto. One of the key state Senate races? A Republican-held district centered around Cooper’s home of Nash County, which Democrats think they can flip and by doing so cement Stein’s veto power in negotiations with the legislature.