Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper defeated Republican Michael Whatley in the state's open Senate race, flipping a seat Republicans had held and delivering Democrats their first Senate pickup of the night, according to race calls from the Associated Press and Decision Desk HQ.
The call came at 8:23 p.m. Tuesday. With 56% of the vote counted, Cooper led Whatley 66.8% to 31.6%, according to reporting from The Hill. Cooper, a two-term governor who left office in 2024, will succeed retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis.
The outcome was not a surprise by the closing weeks. A Senate Leadership Fund super PAC affiliated with Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) canceled its ad spending in North Carolina, as did Americans for Prosperity Action, per The Hill. Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, also stopped advertising as Democrats grew confident in Cooper's position.
"Roy Cooper, the former North Carolina governor, quickly defeated President Trump's chosen GOP candidate, Michael Whatley," The New York Times posted on X after the race was called. "Flipping the seat gives Democrats an essential victory as the party tries to gain Senate control."
The Times post was amplified across social media, including by the account @RealAmVoice, which wrote: "Democrat Roy Cooper is projected to defeat Republican Michael Whatley for North Carolina's open Senate seat."
Whatley, a former North Carolina GOP chairman and Republican National Committee chairman during the 2024 election, had never run for elected office before this race. Trump recruited him to run and campaigned alongside him in the final stretch, as did Vice President JD Vance.
But Whatley could not separate himself from an unpopular president in a state where the economy and the Iran war dominated voter concerns, according to NBC News. The final Elon University poll showed Cooper ahead 52% to 39%, and the RealClearPolitics average had Cooper up nearly 10 points with less than two weeks to go.
Cooper ran almost exclusively on cost of living, branding every campaign stop a "Make Stuff Cost Less" tour, per NPR. Whatley focused on crime and immigration, attacking Cooper over a COVID-era legal settlement that released inmates from state prisons. But polling indicated the economy, not crime, was the top concern for North Carolina voters.
"Really it's the economy is Issue A and then Issue B is probably government corruption, that people are following the most," Patrick Sebastian, a Republican strategist not affiliated with the Whatley campaign, told NPR. "So when we're not talking about those issues, it's going to be hard to connect with people that go to Walmart for their groceries and can only get 80% of what they used to buy because the prices have gone up."
Tillis, the retiring incumbent, warned in an interview before Election Day that Whatley's background as a Trump loyalist likely hurt him in a race widely seen as a rebuke of the president, The Hill reported.
The seat is the first Senate pickup for Democrats this cycle and the first time a Democrat has won a North Carolina Senate seat since 2008, NBC News reported. Republicans had hoped to hold the seat in a state Trump carried twice.
Our Take
Let's be clear about what happened here: Republicans got outworked, outspent, and out-messaged in a state they cannot afford to lose, and the national party saw it coming a month out and walked away.
The Senate Leadership Fund and Americans for Prosperity Action didn't lose this race on Election Day. They lost it in October when they pulled their ads and redirected money to Kansas and other redder ground. You don't abandon a battleground state a month before the vote unless you've already decided the fight is over. That's not a strategy. That's a surrender, and North Carolina voters noticed.
Whatley was a first-time candidate recruited by Trump, and he ran a campaign that talked about crime and immigration while voters were staring at grocery receipts and gas prices. Sebastian, the Republican strategist, said the quiet part out loud: when you're not talking about the economy, you're not connecting with the people who shop at Walmart.
And Tillis, the outgoing senator, spent his final months criticizing the president and then blamed Whatley's loyalty to Trump for the loss. With allies like that, who needs Democrats?
Cooper is a popular two-term governor who never lost a statewide race. He was a prized recruit, avoided a primary, and stayed on message. Democrats did what Republicans used to do: recruit a strong candidate, fund him, and finish the job.
Patriots, this is a wake-up call. The midterms are a referendum on the party in power, and the party in power just lost a Senate seat in a state it needs. If Republicans want to hold the Senate, they need to start talking about the cost of living, stop treating battleground states as an afterthought, and remember that voters send people to Washington to fight for them, not to rubber-stamp anyone.
The question now: will the GOP learn from North Carolina, or will it keep losing seats while telling itself the polls were wrong?
