The Associated Press has projected winners in three more key statewide races:

• Lt. Governor: Rachel Hunt (D)
• Secretary of State: Elaine Marshall (D)
• State Auditor: Dave Boliek (R)

All three races had narrow margins of victory with 100% of precincts reporting.

Only one statewide race remains uncalled: the Supreme Court race between incumbent Democrat Allison Riggs and Republican Jefferson Griffin. It appears to be headed for a recount.

On Tuesday, North Carolina Democrats won one additional seat in the State House, giving them 49 of the 120, breaking the Republican supermajority. That means Republicans will need to secure the support of at least one Democrat to override vetoes from Democratic Gov.-elect Josh Stein.

In the Senate, however, Republicans hardened their supermajority, gaining one seat for a 31-19 Republican-Democrat split, though two seats are within the recount range.

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Democrats Break the GOP Supermajority in the Legislature–But Barely

State House Democrats gained one seat Tuesday, diminishing Republicans’ advantage and giving Democratic Gov.-elect Josh Stein more leverage.

Rachel Hunt, the daughter of four-term Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, looks likely to become the state’s next lieutenant governor. Hunt defeated Republican Hal Weatherman, a longtime political operative but first-time candidate.

With all precincts reporting as of Wednesday morning, Hunt had 49.44 percent of the vote to Weatherman’s 47.75.

North Carolina is among just 17 states where the governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately, rather than via a shared ticket.

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The Hunt Legacy Appears to Live On 

Rachel Hunt looks likely to become the state’s next lieutenant governor, defeating Republican Hal Weatherman.

Democrat Allison Riggs and Republican Jefferson Griffin are in a tight race for a state Supreme Court seat that may head to a recount.

With all precincts reporting early Wednesday, Griffin has a less than 10,000-vote lead over Riggs.

State election officials still have a number of votes to count, including provisional ballots and various absentee ballots. The State Board of Elections will certify final results on November 26.

Riggs has the right under state law to request a recount if the difference between the candidates is either 0.5 percent of the total votes cast or 10,000 votes, whichever is less.

A win for Griffin would give Republicans a 6-1 majority on the state Supreme Court.

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Supreme Court Race Likely to Head to Recount

The state’s highest court has become yet another political battleground over the last decade, and rulings have gotten more partisan.

For longtime Republican operative Doug Heye, the lesson of Mark Robinson’s lopsided defeat is simple. 

“Don’t nominate insane people,” he told The Assembly in an email. “That’s it.”

At the outset, North Carolina’s governor’s race was supposed to be among the closest in the nation. With popular Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper term-limited, Republicans had an opportunity to claim the Executive Mansion for only the second time in 30 years. 

They believed Cooper’s heir apparent, Attorney General Josh Stein, was vulnerable. And they hoped Republican enthusiasm for former President Donald Trump would carry the man Trump once called “better than Martin Luther King.” 

Instead, Robinson, the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, suffered the state’s biggest landslide in a governor’s race since 1980, losing to Stein 55 percent to 40 percent. Fox News called the race at 7:36 p.m., just six minutes after polls closed on Tuesday.

“Certainly, the NCGOP is going to have egg on their face,” said Jonathan Bridges, a prominent Republican political consultant. “There are a lot of donors that are aggravated right now.”

A year ago, some Republican insiders warned that Robinson was fatally flawed. But they were ignored. Robinson had Trump’s endorsement and grassroots support. Most party leaders fell in line, and Robinson coasted through the primary. 

A political disaster followed. Robinson ran 18 points behind former President Donald Trump, who won the state by 3.4 points.

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Mark Robinson’s Predictable Implosion

North Carolina’s governor’s race was supposed to be among the closest elections in the country. Here’s how Republicans blew it—and why it might happen again.

Anderson Clayton set up a chair outside the Person County Library before the sun came up Tuesday morning, ready to hand out literature as voters arrived to cast their ballots.

“It’s going to be a crazy day,” said Clayton, the 26-year-old chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. “But I knew I wanted to start here.”

Clayton grew up in Roxboro and still lives in the town of about 8,000. She credits it with helping shape her worldview and keeping her centered.

As the youngest state party chair in the nation, she’s lived in a sometimes blinding spotlight for nearly two years as she worked to break a GOP legislative supermajority, retain the governor’s mansion, and—just maybe—help make Kamala Harris the nation’s first female president.

“Joe Biden called me last night,” Clayton said. “The fucking President of United States being like, ‘Anderson, y’all have done one hell of a job in North Carolina.’”

Clayton choked back tears as she recalled the conversation.

“I’m 26, leading an entire political party in a country that right now is on the precipice of either disaster or joy and hope,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Oh God, I hope we go the right way’ … So, yeah, the last 24 hours has been a lot of that.”

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Out of the Blue

Anderson Clayton pulled off an upset to lead the N.C. Democratic Party at just 25. On Election Day, she felt the weight of expectations. 

U.S. Rep. Don Davis is claiming victory on his seat after a tight race with Republican Laurie Buckhout in the 1st District. 

Davis held a lead of 49 percent to nearly 48 percent Wednesday morning, according to unofficial North Carolina State Board of Election results. Buckhout says she is ready for a recount if the margin is thin enough.

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Democratic Rep. Don Davis Appears to Hold On in the 1st District

The U.S. House race was widely viewed as the only congressional tossup in the Southeast. 

Michele Morrow surprised nearly everyone in North Carolina last March when she pulled off a primary win over the Republican incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction, Catherine Truitt. 

But she could not defeat Democrat Mo Green, who had 51 percent of the vote to Morrow’s 49 as of early Wednesday morning.

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Democrat Mo Green Defeats Michele Morrow to Lead N.C. Public Schools

The race pitted a public school critic against a former school administrator.

The Associated Press projects that Republicans have won the following statewide offices in North Carolina:

• Agriculture Commissioner: Steve Troxler
• Insurance Commissioner: Mike Causey
• Labor Commissioner: Luke Farley
• State Treasurer: Brad Briner

The races for Lieutenant Governor, State Auditor, Secretary of State, and Superintendent of Public Instruction remain too close to call.

When the polls closed at 7:30 p.m., voters who were still in line were allowed to stay in line and vote. Some continued to process votes for hours.

In Spring Lake, the final voter finished at 10:30 p.m., Board of Elections Chairperson Irene Grimes said late Tuesday.

And in Manchester precinct, which serves Fort Liberty and part of Fayetteville, the polling site closed by around 11:25 p.m.

Earlier Tuesday, Grimes said an unusually large number of soldiers turned out this year, creating long lines that caused at least eight precincts to continue balloting after 7:30 p.m.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson won the race for North Carolina attorney general, defeating Republican Rep. Dan Bishop to keep the office in Democratic hands.

With about 86 percent of the precincts reporting, Jackson had 52 percent of the vote to Bishop’s 48 percent as of late Tuesday night. Bishop called Jackson to concede, Spectrum news reported.

For more than 120 years, Democrats have had a chokehold on the state attorney general’s office, sometimes using it as a launching pad for higher office. But Bishop, the hard-line conservative who shot to the national spotlight eight years ago when he sponsored the state “bathroom bill,” was hopeful about making history by breaking the cycle.

He had an uphill battle in his opponent, Jackson, who has amassed 2.2 million followers on TikTok. He has gotten even more followers through his direct-to-camera conversations with voters.

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Jeff Jackson Maintains Democratic Hold on Attorney General’s Office

The race featured two well-known U.S. House members facing off to be the state’s top cop.

BREAKING: Donald Trump wins North Carolina. #APRaceCall at 11:18 p.m. EST. https://t.co/FjgpZFcJ4E

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) November 6, 2024

After his concession speech, Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson and his wife, Yolanda, made a round of the room to embrace supporters. In the corner, five supporters clasped hands to pray for the lieutenant governor.

“This isn’t the end, it truly is a beginning,” intoned one.

Joetta MacMiller, who worked with the Robinson campaign in Durham, said that she has supported him since 2018 and would happily continue to in any future races.

“With Mark, what you see is what you get. He’s a great man,” MacMiller said. “Smear campaigns really suck.”

A campaign spokesperson said that he wasn’t sure if Robinson would call Stein to formally concede tonight.

Speaking at his campaign event in Raleigh on Tuesday night, Republican Mark Robinson conceded the gubernatorial race to Democrat Josh Stein. “It doesn’t seem like it’s going our way tonight,” Robinson told supporters. “But it’s always going our way.”

“I’m standing here now, and I’m not sad one lick. I’m a little disappointed. I’m disappointed for you, because I wanted this so bad for you,” he continued. “I wanted this for the people of North Carolina. Not for me. I wanted it for them.”

Robinson said he will focus on finishing out his term as lieutenant governor and then take some time off to spend with his wife and grandchildren.

“It’s about the people who believe in you. It’s about the state that you love–the state that I fully intend to continue to serve for the next two months.”

“And who knows? Maybe in the future once again somewhere in office,” he added, prompting a few shouts and claps in the room. “Who knows? I don’t know. But we’re going to take our time.”

Last week, I received a flyer in the mail from an organization called “DJs at the Polls” telling me that “THERE WILL BE A DJ” at my polling place on Election Day. But when I showed up to vote today? No DJ.

Still reeling from that betrayal, I was thrilled when I showed up at the Carrboro Elementary polling place this afternoon and heard a beat floating across the parking lot.

In the back corner, far from the tables of partisan election workers, I found James “DJ JMAC” McDonald hard at work. He said that DJs at the Polls has thousands of music makers up and down the east coast today.

The music vibe for democracy?

“I’m trying to catch a little bit of everything, you know what I’m saying?” said DJ JMAC. “Little bit of soft rock, R&B, pop, hip hop.”

Fox, CNN, and NBC have all called the North Carolina governor’s race for Democrat Josh Stein. Vote totals are still low, but currently show Stein with 53 percent of the vote to Republican Mark Robinson’s 42 percent.

Outside Harvey A.  Newlin Elementary school, one of 39 Alamance County voting sites, there were more people handing out sample ballots than the trickle of voters from mid- to late-afternoon.

Wayne Smith, an 81-year-old veteran and registered Republican who voted early this year, was heading to the school parking lot at about 4 p.m. with a stack of sample ballots and a folding chair under his arm.

He’s a Donald Trump fan, a routine Fox news watcher and voted for Republicans for all but one race. “I voted for Jeff Jackson,” Smith said referring to the Democratic attorney general candidate. “He’s a veteran.”

Smith had spent the past several hours chatting with election day volunteers who had come to the polling site from other counties at the request of Alamance County Democrats. 

Elena Snavely, a Durham voter, was there after responding to a request for help from Ricky Hurtado, the first Latino Democrat to serve in the General Assembly. Scottie Seawell, a 60-year-old consultant from Carrboro, and Ellen and Michael Bettmann, a couple from Hanover, New Hampshire, visiting their adult son at his home near Saxapahaw, showed up after a request for help from the Alamance County Democratic Party. 

They were cautiously optimistic about Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances of becoming the first female president. Although they had handed out more sample ballots than Smith, they had not seen enough voters to know if it was a trend that would hold across the county, state or country. “It’s too small a sample,” Seawell said.

During breaks in the stream of voters, the Democrats listened to Smith as he explained his support for Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate whose campaign has been riddled by allegations of misogynistic and racist posts to an online porn site years ago—assertions Robinson has denied. They also discussed Robinson’s own words in which he says women “need to keep their skirts down” to avoid abortions. 

“He’s telling the truth. Women do need to keep their skirts down,” Smith told the Democrats handing out sample ballots and a reporter outside the school. “I’m against abortion.”

Although Angel Shields, a 43-year-old non-affiliated voter from Burlington had voted for Trump like Smith, she did not support Mark Robinson for governor. “He’s  crazy,” Shields said. “I almost think he’s a little delusional.”

One Black woman who said she voted for Trump and Robinson because of their opposition to abortion asked that her name not be published because she’s a public school teacher and typically doesn’t share her political views.

A male voter at the school who said he voted for all Democrats because he was worried about campaign rhetoric and policies against women also asked for his name not to be published. He’s in a same-sex relationship and worries what his future will be like if Trump were to be re-elected.

The U.S. Justice Department announced last week that Alamance was one of three North Carolina counties it planned to monitor for compliance with federal voting rights laws.

Katherine Kelly, 44, an attorney there as a poll worker, said she had not seen any issues that would rise to that level. Some voters she encountered had questions about the new photo ID law. Others needed information on how to cast a provisional ballot. “Honestly, people are mostly wanting to get in and vote,” Kelly said.

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Voters trickled into Hoskins Avenue Baptist Church by twos and threes as a gray dusk settled around the stately building. It wasn’t the eye-catching lines that often attract attention on Election Day, but these are the voters Democrats need to win if Kamala Harris is to have a chance to win the state.

Standing just outside of the blinding neon glow of the nearby Magic 777 vape shop and speaking in fits and starts amid the sound of a screeching commercial train, several occasional and uncommitted voters explained why this year was different.

“I was kind of forced to come,” Teresa Walker said. When her boss at the YWCA learned Walker hadn’t voted due to her work and school commitments, she let Walker leave work extra early to get across town before polls closed. It’s the first time Walker has voted since Obama was a candidate. She cast her ballot for Harris.

Koffi Tanou wasn’t particularly interested in either presidential candidate. But his family kept pushing him to do his civic duty, so he did.

Tanou settled on Harris because of Donald Trump’s promise to deport immigrants, he said, noting that he works with a number of people from Mexico in his job as a chef. “I can’t really be voting for someone who’s trying to push them out.”

Brandon Moore, a truck driver, didn’t know who he was going to vote for until today, either. He said he feels like politicians disappear after they get elected. He didn’t even plan to vote when he got off work 45 minutes before The Assembly spoke with him. He told his mom and grandma he was heading home, which they would not accept.

“They’re like, ‘Go vote!,’” he recalled. “God damnit,” he said, laughing. He decided to cast his ballot for Harris.

“I already seen what Trump had to offer,” he said. “I’m good.”

But all those Democratic canvassing efforts had their impact, too.

“I got phone calls, oh my God, for these past two-three weeks,” he said. “I just want them to stop.”

Lt. Col. James Mercer sat in a folding camp chair outside the Nash County Agriculture Center, his home precinct.

“This district will make a difference in the super majority,” said Mercer, the Democratic candidate for state Senate. He’s vying to win a seat currently held by Republican Rep. Lisa Stone Barnes.

Donning bluejeans and a camouflage print hat embroidered with “Operation Iraqi Freedom Veteran” Mercer’s break was short-lived as voters picked up around 3:30 p.m.

His district is one that has become a multimillion dollar race, with Democrats spending $2.6 million on advertising for the race Isabelle Pierson, deputy director of the North Carolina Senate Democratic Caucus said.

“Numbers are on our side, if the voters show up,” Pierson said, noting that turnout has been a challenge with young voters and Black voters. In a deeply divided district, she remains optimistic, as Mercer—a former police officer, firefighter and current teacher—is widely known.

“There have been voters who don’t know if they’re voting for Harris, but they know that they’re going to vote for Mercer,” Pierson said.

At the Gerton Fire Department in Henderson County, voters trickled in one at a time in the early afternoon. Once the rain stopped, the pace picked up, although at most two people waited in line in the back room behind the fire truck bays. 

The department was an early voting site as well, replacing the Bat Cave Fire Department after it was damaged in the storm. The precinct has approximately 900 registered voters, according to precinct judge Joy Huntley. 

For Gina Tines, it was her first time voting. She said she backpacked for many years in the U.S. and abroad and never felt informed enough about candidates to vote.

“I’m not going to vote blindly,” she said. But this time, “I have a direction that I would like it to go.” She wouldn’t say how she voted.

She wasn’t completely sure she would make it to the polls. Tines, who lives between Bat Cave and Edneyville, suffered property damage during the storm and still deals with blocked and damaged roads, which have doubled her regular hour long commute into Fairview. And her dog died after drinking flood water. “My grief cycle is big these days,” she said. Voting was a last-minute decision, but she said she was glad she did it.

This story was produced by the WNC Election Hub, a project of the NC Local News Workshop, in partnership with The Assembly and funded with generous support from the Knight Election Integrity initiative.

The Mecklenburg Democrats were hoping to knock on 300,000 doors across their county this election. As they launched today’s 3 p.m. canvassing shift, they were at 403,000. They added 3,450,000 calls on top of it.

Maddux Vernon, Logan Grodsky, and Aakash Palathra are three of the people responsible for those numbers. The three UNC-Chapel Hill students drove down to Charlotte last night. Despite not getting in until 1:30 a.m., they were up for the first canvassing shift of the day at 7:30 a.m. They then took three extra shifts throughout day and planned on a fourth in the evening.

Rain picked up as they split up to cover a section of northwest Charlotte filled with single-story homes, a mix of brick and vinyl siding. The trees were sparse but tall, and their literature curled with the wet. The post-its with Election Day information stopped sticking to the doors. But Palathra spoke to one man in his 20s with a young child who said he was too busy making ends meet to bother voting. Palathra thought he changed the man’s mind. At least he took the suggested Democratic ballot.

“Send that to the group chat!” Grodksy told him.

The most common conversation Palathra had, though, was about why he was out in the rain.

“Because I’m trying to save America!” Palathra joked. 

On opposite sides of the walkway leading up to the Sonja Haynes Stone Center polling site on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus, student Democratic and Republican organizers set up shop for the day.

College Republicans president Matthew Trott, a junior, and vice president Preston Hill, a sophomore, know they’re not going to make much of a dent in Democratic-dominated Orange County. During early voting at the campus site this year, 47 percent of voters were registered Democrats, compared to 5.67 percent who were registered Republicans, according to numbers collected Tuesday from the John Locke Foundation VoteTracker. (Another 46.5% were unaffiliated, a growing group statewide, especially among young voters.) Overall, 4,819 voters between the ages of 18 to 25 voted at the site in early voting.

Still, the conservative student organizers say they have felt their outreach land with students and beyond this cycle. Their chapter has doubled in the last semester, from around 120 members last year up to around 240 now. Media outlets from Germany to Australia came by their events over the past few weeks to capture their work on campus.

Trott thinks pro-Palestinian protests and the American flag incident—which led conservative operatives to launch a GoFundMe that raised half a million dollars for a party in September—put Chapel Hill conservative students in the national spotlight. 

“We’re raising awareness of the fact that not all college students are Democrats, that there are, in fact, a lot of Republicans, and that we’re doing it at one of the most liberal institutions in North Carolina,” Trott said. “A lot of people are realizing that college students and Chapel Hill in particular are not one homogenous group and that we have a wide array of viewpoints.”

Trott feels confident about Republicans’ chances in the Council of State and legislative races, though he did not see “any path” where Republican Mark Robinson will win the governor’s office. He feels confident that former President Donald Trump will win North Carolina, but the nerves are still there.

“Everyone is anxious,” Trott said. “We’re not sure which way it will go.”

Hill, who wore a “Team Trump” sticker with a link to the SwampTheVote.com website run by the Republican National Committee, said he wasn’t sure how the election would go at the national level. If Trump is ahead in Georgia and North Carolina by around midnight, he said, he’ll feel pretty good about Trump’s chances. (And he’ll feel the opposite if the results in those states swing toward Vice President Kamala Harris tonight.)

Either way, he isn’t planning to sleep a wink tonight until the results are in.

As she’s run this year for another term in the legislature—this time as a Republican—state Rep. Tricia Cotham told The Assembly on Tuesday that she’s run into some Democrats who’ve called her “traitor” and other names for switching parties last year.

But on Election Day, she got a supportive boost from House Speaker Tim Moore, a fellow Republican who helped engineer her party switch.

Moore greeted voters for 30 minutes alongside Cotham at William Davie Park, a polling place in south Charlotte. The two posed for pictures holding each others’ campaign signs. The park is located in both her House District 105 and in the U.S. House district—No. 14—that he is running this year to represent. 

On Tuesday, Cotham’s re-election pitch to voters was that she’s brought state money to Mecklenburg projects and has supported tax cuts and state-funded scholarships for private schools. 

Cotham’s Democratic opponent, Nicole Sidman, who was also campaigning Tuesday, was quick to remind voters that Cotham’s abandonment of the Democratic Party had given the GOP a veto-proof supermajority in the lower house. That has meant, among other things, that the legislature was able to enshrine in law a measure opposed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper than bans abortion in the state after 12 weeks.

Voters in N.C. House District 105 weighed in on the question: Was it right for Cotham to switch to the GOP after winning her last election as a Democrat?

For Democrat Cristy Helms, a 39-year-old preschool teacher from Mint Hill, the answer was a definite no.

“I was not happy about it,” said Helms, who voted for Sidman. “It” being Cotham “being able to so easily switch sides, and so easily change her stands on issues.”

But Betty Hough, a 78-year-old retiree and registered Republican from Mint Hill, was cheered when Cotham joined her party and overturned Cooper’s vetoes. “I’d rather have the people’s voice heard through many people rather than just one person,” she said.

The wait time at a polling place in Boone stretched to 4 hours on Tuesday afternoon, The Appalachian student newspaper reports:

As of 4 p.m. Election Day, the line from the Plemmons Student Union polling location stretched all the way to the student union spiral staircase, resulting in a four-hour wait time to vote.

A poll worker told those waiting in line the time frame, resulting in some leaving the line to find another polling location to vote.

“I kind of have other stuff on my plans,” said Cylen Genwright, a sophomore psychology major waiting in line. “But I’m probably still going to go to the courthouse and see how long it is there.”

Nash County GOP and Democratic party tents faced one another across the parking lot of the Braswell Memorial Library downtown Rocky Mount. The volunteers working the booths seemed physically as divided as the politics in the county.

While Democrats represent the largest registered voting bloc, with more than 28,000 registered voters to Republicans 19,000, the county is entirely represented by Republicans in the state legislature.

Representatives from the two parties united with nonpartisan poll watchers around 2:00 p.m. to call the police after a woman driving a Black Nissan Sentra drove in circles throughout the polling place’s parking lot, blasting music, and turning the wrong way on a one-way road.

Christopher Braswell, the eastern region organizer with Democracy North Carolina, was one of the people who picked up a phone to call 911.

“Rocky Mount has been an early voting place with voter intimidation, people bullying voters,” Braswell said, noting he has been called out to the location seven times. “I just want everybody to be safe, instead I’m telling everyone to get up close to the tents, away from the curb.”

He said that people working polls were telling voters that they needed to vote for particular candidates. “There is no playbook for Rocky Mount.”

Rocky Mount Police Department confirmed they received several phone calls, and that police were unable to apprehend the driver.

Technical glitches led the State Board of Elections to extend voting by 30 minutes in two precincts—one in Wilson and another in Burke.

The votes in Wilson were unanimous. The board decided to allow people to vote until 8 p.m. at Gardners School in Wilson County. The other precinct was The Rock Church in Burke County.

The state elections board has the authority to extend hours beyond the time polls close at 7:30 p.m. if there are extraordinary circumstances. The board held an emergency meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

At the Gardners School precinct, voting was delayed Tuesday morning when printers went down temporarily preventing poll workers from printing “authorization to vote” forms that voters needed to check into the polling place. At least 10 people were affected, board members said during the meeting, and several left before casting a ballot.

Board member Stacy Eggers IV worried about extending voting at the Wilson County precinct but eventually agreed with other board members to extend the deadline by half an hour.

In Burke County, officials at the Rock Church precinct opened at least 30 minutes late Tuesday morning because a laptop couldn’t boot up. That laptop contained the official poll book precinct officials used to check voters in. Kenny Rhyne, Burke County’s election director, told the board he contacted a technician to fix the problem as soon as he could, and the laptop was back to work just before 7 a.m. Paul Cox, the board’s legal counsel, read an affidavit from a former county Republican Party chair who said the precinct didn’t open until after 7 a.m.

Board member Kevin Lewis urged his colleagues to treat this situation the same as the Wilson County case.

Earlier in the day, Karen Brinson Bell, the state’s election director, said Election Day had run smoothly, including in the 25 counties ravaged by Hurricane Helene. And she had not heard of any major incidents at any of the more than 2,600 polling places on Tuesday.

Despite polls showing him down double digits, embattled Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson told reporters Tuesday that he expected to upset Attorney General Josh Stein.

“We feel great,” he said. “We’re energized by what we’re seeing on the ground. We’re getting great feedback. We’re getting great exit polling. The numbers are in our favor when it comes to registrations, and so we’re looking for a big win tonight.”

According to a media release on Monday, Robinson planned to visit voters outside of the Bahama Ruritan Club in rural Durham County. The 28th precinct is the most Republican-friendly of the dark-blue county’s 59 polling locations, but voters were few and far between at lunchtime. Instead, Robinson answered journalists’ questions for about five minutes, got back in his black SUV, and left for Wake Forest, where he planned another stop.

In his remarks, the often-combative Robinson sounded conciliatory. Throughout the campaign, he said, Democrats had told him, “Hey, I’m not going to vote for you, but thank you for your service to the state.”

“I think that’s what we need to start doing more,” Robinson said, his normally booming voice sounding strained. “We need to start giving people kudos for stepping up to run for these offices, no matter what side they’re on.”

Two Durham County Republican Party volunteers—they did not give their names—said they hoped to return to a more decent era of politics.

“I wish for a time when people would just compete on what they believe in their policies, and not the slander and the lies that are being thrown at people,” said one of the volunteers, wearing a red Robinson T-shirt. “That ruins everybody’s integrity. I mean, it’s just disgusting.”

Asked for specifics, she mentioned “obviously everything that they’ve been going after Donald Trump for.” But she also noted the allegations Robinson has faced.

In September, The Assembly reported that six men said Robinson frequented porn shops in Greensboro in the 1990s, and CNN reported that he posted obscene and offensive comments—including calling himself a “black NAZI”—on a porn site’s forum. (Robinson has denied the allegations and sued CNN and one of The Assembly’s sources for defamation.)

“The things that they threw at Mark are just disgusting,” she said. “I know the man and his wife, and there’s absolutely no way that any of that is remotely true.”

“It’s the quack liberal, right?” a voter said affectionately while walking toward Masonboro Elementary School in Wilmington on Election Day.

“Dangerously woke,” David Hill answered with a smile, shaking the voter’s hand.

The voter and Hill were quoting from ubiquitous campaign advertisements supporting Republican Sen. Michael Lee, who is running against Hill for re-election in one of the state’s most competitive legislative races for Senate District 7.

Advertisements in the race got nasty. In August, Hill’s attorneys sent a letter to Sen. Lee’s team threatening to pursue litigation if they didn’t remove their ads. A physician, Hill had spoken in favor of gender-affirming care for children, among other transgender-related stances, that Lee’s team latched onto this campaign in their ads. Hill took particular issue with the “quack” label, believing it implied he was a “quack doctor”—which he felt crossed a line.

The TV ads even include a duck quacking sound. Sen. Lee’s team defended its ads as being true and kept at it. At the same time, Lee has called Hill’s attack ads on Lee’s vote last year to restrict most abortions to 12 weeks misleading.

On Tuesday while greeting voters, Hill said he’d been warned the race could get ugly. But he’s since found humor in it, he said. “It’s such an absurd accusation that I just have to own it,” he said. The ads may even backfire, he said. “I’ve had so many voters come up to me and say, “I’m voting for you because of those ads.’”

The fight for District 7 is the most expensive local race by far. The Democratic party has pummeled just over $1 million into Hill’s campaign as of the latest campaign disclosures and sees the district as among one of five “must-win” state Senate races statewide. Republicans need to keep all their legislative seats to maintain a supermajority, which can override a gubernatorial veto.

The Republican party has contributed more than double that to ensure Sen. Lee keeps his seat, at about $2.1 million this cycle. Republicans are prioritizing three all-important state Senate seats, and have given Lee the most of those candidates this cycle.

“There’s a lot of money coming in on both sides. Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life,” Lee’s campaign manager, Chase Horton, said of the attack ads. Horton added Hill’s legal letter “was really just a PR stunt. What they wanted was a headline which is what they got.”

Lee was first elected to the seat in 2014 and again in 2016. In 2018, he lost to Democrat Harper Peterson by just 231 votes, but regained it in a 2020 rematch and again secured the seat in 2022. His last two victories have been more comfortable—by about 1,300 and 1,700 votes—but still, the race remains fiercely competitive.

With widespread name recognition, Horton said he felt confident heading into the night. “I don’t want to jinx it,” he said. “But personally, I feel good.”

Before showing up to vote this morning at Etowah Elementary School, Amelia Jones had to weigh which was more urgent: finding a place to live or deciding the future of her country. Jones, 31, is a nurse who lost her home in Hurricane Helene and has been staying with friends since the storm. She said she was too focused on her housing search to vote early, but she made time today to cast her ballot.

“As a woman, I’m really afraid of losing specific rights,” she said. If more people lose access to abortion, she’s worried that “things will get desperate. We’ll see a lot of horrible things, healthcare-wise.” She planned to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Jones was part of a slow but steady stream of people who showed up in a misty rain to vote in this community at the western edge of Henderson County. Nearby at the Etowah Library, there was a short line just after 8 a.m., but no real crowds, as there had been during early voting. 

“It was so crazy here last week,” said David Buckingham, chief election judge for the precinct. He said 2,800 people voted at the library after the state legislature required the county to open more early voting sites. According to data from the North Carolina Board of Elections, 54.8 percent of Henderson County’s 92,217 registered voters voted early.

Today, turnout has been light and voters have been respectful. Most people are filling out paper ballots by hand, Buckingham said, because they find it faster than using the voting machines. “I don’t know what to expect,” he said of the turnout. “We’re prepared for anything.”

Henderson County is known to be a Republican stronghold, with 44 percent of its voters registered unaffiliated, 36 percent Republican, and 19 percent Democrat. One mother of four, who declined to give her name, said she voted at Etowah Elementary because “I just don’t want a woman to be president.” 

This story was produced by the WNC Election Hub, a project of the NC Local News Workshop, in partnership with The Assembly and funded with generous support from the Knight Election Integrity initiative.

Republican New Hanover County Commissioner Dane Scalise was sanguine at the polls on Tuesday. “I defer to the will of the people,” said the candidate running to keep the seat he was appointed to last year.

No nerves?

“None,” he said, prompting a nearby Democratic volunteer to chime in: “Wow, I wish I felt that way.”

Many across the state are on edge on Election Day, anxious to learn results for many consequential races, but especially, the big one: whether North Carolina will pick former president Donald J. Trump again.

But Scalise sticks to local races. “I don’t talk about national politics,” he said.

His No. 1 issue this campaign has been ensuring all county residents gain access to clean drinking water. In 2022, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s granular activated carbon filtration system went online, serving PFAS-free water to about 190,000 customers. While that was a welcome development, not all 239,000 New Hanover County residents have access to ultra-clean water. Thousands still rely on wells.

Scalise says he won’t stop until all county residents can tap into the system. “I literally will not be satisfied until we can get everybody onto the water-sewer [system] that we possibly can,” he said. “The entirety of the county would be my dream.”

He believes this can be accomplished without raising taxes, by continuing to push polluters to pay for the infrastructure and asking for state funding to help offset costs.

“Environmentalism is an important concept for a lot of people in our community, and it cuts across all party lines,” he said. “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

Election Day got underway today in Cumberland County with a key group of people missing from its 77 voting precincts: Republican election observers.

Cumberland County Republican Party Chair Nina Morton said she tried to send her list of observers by email to county Board of Elections Director Angie Amaro about five minutes before the deadline, which was noon Monday. But something went wrong with her laptop or internet connection, Morton said, and the list didn’t get sent until 12:02 p.m.

State law says that it is too late.

Read the story from our partners at CityView.

The polling site at North Carolina Central University’s Turner Law Building was pretty quiet on Tuesday morning, with a handful of students and others slowly trickling into precinct 55-49. But Devin Freeman, a senior at NCCU studying political science who is the Democratic precinct chair, wasn’t worried about student turnout. “I’ve seen so many people come out to vote,” Freeman said of the early voting period. “It’s neat seeing so many students.”

Early voting numbers back that up. Data collected Monday morning from the John Locke Foundation VoteTracker showed that early voting turnout among 18 to 25 year olds at NCCU’s campus polling place was up by more than 700 votes compared to 2020.

“And I’m pretty optimistic about the day as well,” Freeman said, “because right now it’s really just coming down to North Carolina.”

Sylvia DeLeon has been working elections since she was 21. The chief judge for the Ballentine precinct in southern Wake County ordered 300 pins featuring the North Carolina state flag and the U.S. flag to give out to first-time and future voters.

“I’m 80, it might be my last election,” DeLeon said, noting that the polling place, located in the Ballentine Elementary School’s gym, has always given out stickers and a round of applause for first-time voters. “I want them to remember and to come back.”

As of 8:50 a.m. on Tuesday, 284 voters had cast a ballot here, and DeLeon was down to her last four pins. She gave three to children who accompanied their parents to the poll, and the last to first-time voter Rob Slaughter, 37, who became a citizen last year after immigrating from London.

“I’m very excited,” Slaughter said. “I lived here for almost eight years. Being able to participate in democracy is important.”

Like many new voters, Slaughter is registered as unaffiliated, and said he didn’t vote a straight ticket.

Anderson Clayton set up a chair outside the Person County Library before the sun came up Tuesday morning, ready to hand out literature to voters as they arrived to cast their ballots.

“It’s going to be a crazy day,” said Clayton, the 26-year-old chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. “But I knew I wanted to start here.”

Clayton grew up in Roxboro, interned with the local paper, and still has deep ties here. This year her father, Mark Clayton, is running for office for the first time, seeking a seat on the county board of commissioners. She’s been harassing family members to get out and vote, right up to Election Day.

In jeans and well worn Blundstone boots, a blue flannel shirt and McGregor denim jacket, Clayton greeted people she knew with a big hug as they arrived to vote. She approached strangers with a big smile and a “Hey, baby! You going in to vote? Can I give you one of these? I know Mark Clayton would appreciate your vote!’”

In deeply red Person County, it may make no difference. But Clayton isn’t writing anyone or anywhere off.

Democrats are pushing hard in rural areas this year, leading with issues rather than partisanship. Roxboro’s a small town of about 8,000. Clayton knows how it leans politically. But she also knows there are people like her mother. She remembers her strongly opposing Amendment One, which changed the state constitution to explicitly ban same-sex marriage in 2012.

“She put up a sign in our yard against it,” Clayton remembered. “They’d steal that sign every week. She didn’t care. She just put up another one.”

If you stay up late expecting to hear who won the presidential race on election night, you might be disappointed. The race is expected to be tight, both in North Carolina and nationally. Some ballots are processed later than others. Close contests can lead to recounts.

“If it’s two days later, that’s not a sign of negligence, nor is it a sign of somebody doing the wrong thing,” said Chris Cooper, director of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University.

It’s possible voters won’t know the entire picture until the state’s 100 local election boards hold their canvass meetings—the official certification of votes—on November 15.

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When Will We Know Who Won the Election in North Carolina?

When will absentee and early ballots be counted, will Hurricane Helene cause delays, and more questions answered.

North Carolina’s college voters could be a deciding factor in the presidential election. But Hurricane Helene has brought new challenges to turning out a group of voters that is already unreliable.

At UNC-Asheville, the weekend before the election will be a frenzy for freshman Steven Nguyen, who’s one of a handful of students leading a nonpartisan effort there to maximize voter turnout. Students are only starting to trickle back to campus this week after evacuating due to the storm. Meanwhile, the early voting window ends Saturday, and with it, the final opportunity to register and vote at the same time.

“That makes it harder for us, because there are some students who have either registered to a different state or they haven’t registered yet, and that’s where early voting helps the most,” said Nguyen, 18. “But with that not an option for those people, we are really out of luck with helping them.”

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Hurricane Helene Scrambles Early Voting at UNC-Asheville

Students who were evacuated due to the storm are starting to trickle back to campus as the end of early voting nears.

An estimated 1 million new voters are eligible to participate in the presidential election in North Carolina this year. People between the ages of 18 and 25 make up the highest share of these new registered voters, according to a data analysis by The Assembly, with Gen Z adding more than 434,000 potential voters to the rolls between November 2020 and May 2024.

While the number of new voters favors Democrats, past voting patterns favor Republicans.

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Red, Purple & Blue: North Carolina’s Evolving Electorate

Democrats hope new voters and shifting demographics will deliver N.C.’s electoral votes. It’ll take an impressive turnout.

To reach North Carolina’s 7.7 million voters, campaigns are spending millions on airwaves and algorithms. They’re filling TV and computer screens with partisan messages. But it’s their ground games with text messages, phone calls, and personal visits that could be most effective in pushing voters to the polls. 

North Carolina Republicans have a track record of getting their voters out. They’re confident of this year’s outreach effort despite criticism from some in their own party that their effort is lagging.

But both campaigns face a mountain-size wild card. Voter turnout could be depressed in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene disrupted life and livelihoods, though nobody can predict how much.

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Trump and Harris Fight It Out Street by Street

Republicans have had stronger get-out-the-vote efforts for more than a decade, but Democrats are determined to outwork them this year.