North Carolina elections in 2026

North Carolina US Senate: D 55.0 to R 45.0, safe Democratic, well sourced. Roy Cooper flips North Carolina Senate seat in landslide victory

House delegation as simulated: 8 D, 5 R, 1 tossup of 14 districts swept.

Model readings of live reporting, not polling. The full North Carolina board, with sourcing and the county map where one exists, is on the Midterms 2026 tab of the homepage.

How North Carolina votes

North Carolina pairs booming research and banking metros in Raleigh and Charlotte with a large rural electorate, producing razor-thin statewide margins. It has become a fixture on every national battleground list.

Its largest population centers include Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham. Where a state's people live, and what those places do for a living, is the starting point for how Electorate HQ simulations reason about it.

On the ballot in North Carolina

Election day is November 3, 2026. North Carolina has 1 statewide race and 14 House seats on the ballot.

Statewide races

House districts

Every House seat is elected every two years. Each district below is listed with the counties inside it, computed from the current Census boundary files, wherever those files give a clean answer. Not sure which district is yours? Use the address lookup below.

• North Carolina 1st district: Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Edgecombe, Gates, Greene, Halifax and 13 more counties (21 in all)
• North Carolina 2nd district: Wake County
• North Carolina 3rd district: Beaufort, Carteret, Craven, Dare, Duplin, Hyde, Jones, Onslow and 3 more counties (11 in all)
• North Carolina 4th district: Durham, Orange Counties
• North Carolina 5th district: Alexander, Alleghany, Ashe, Caldwell, Guilford, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry and 2 more counties (10 in all)
• North Carolina 6th district: Davidson, Davie, Rowan Counties
• North Carolina 7th district: Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, Cumberland, New Hanover, Pender Counties
• North Carolina 8th district: Anson, Cabarrus, Montgomery, Richmond, Robeson, Scotland, Stanly, Union Counties
• North Carolina 9th district: Alamance, Chatham, Hoke, Moore, Randolph Counties
• North Carolina 10th district: Catawba, Forsyth, Iredell, Lincoln, Yadkin Counties
• North Carolina 11th district: Avery, Buncombe, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson and 7 more counties (15 in all)
• North Carolina 12th district: Mecklenburg County
• North Carolina 13th district: Caswell, Franklin, Granville, Harnett, Johnston, Lee, Person Counties
• North Carolina 14th district: Burke, Cleveland, Gaston, Polk, Rutherford Counties

Find your exact districts

Which district am I in? North Carolina districts by county

House districts follow population, not county lines, so a single county can hold several districts and a single district can span many. Each county is listed under the district that holds its center, so if your county appears once above, that district holds most of it and is probably yours. If it appears under several, or if you live near a district line, use the address lookup for the exact answer.

Before you vote in North Carolina

Registration deadlines, early voting windows, mail ballot rules and identification requirements are all set at the state level and change between cycles, so the authoritative source is your own election office rather than any national site. The federal directory at vote.gov links to every state's registration system, and your county election office publishes the sample ballot that includes local contests.

The ballot section above covers the federal and statewide offices on the North Carolina ballot for November 3, 2026. Each statewide race links to a page with current coverage and an AI-generated simulation of the contest, always labeled as a simulation rather than a poll.

Local races

Local councils and commissions, school boards, judges, sheriffs and municipal offices are also on many North Carolina ballots, and they vary block by block. Your county election office publishes the authoritative local sample ballot.

North Carolina's weight in Washington

North Carolina carries 16 electoral votes, which ranks it 9 of 51 by that measure, and sends 14 voting members to the House.

That arithmetic is why the same national argument lands differently here than in a state of another size: a candidate courting North Carolina is competing for a specific share of the map, and the issues below are the ones that share actually turns on.

How North Carolina is represented

North Carolina is divided into 14 House districts, each drawn to hold roughly the same number of people, while its two Senate seats represent the state as a whole. A campaign here therefore runs two different arguments at once: a local one shaped by whichever district a voter lives in, and a statewide one that has to hold together across all 14.

Electoral votes follow the same arithmetic, House seats plus two, which is why North Carolina carries 16 in a presidential year and why small states carry proportionally more weight there than population alone would give them. The district list above shows every district on the 2026 ballot and the counties the boundary files place inside each one.

Issues that weigh heavily in North Carolina

Based on the state's industry mix, geography and cost of living, these issues tend to carry structural weight in North Carolina elections:

Latest North Carolina political headlines

Simulate North Carolina

In the Electorate HQ simulator, North Carolina is one of 51 delegations that reads current reporting and decides a presidential race issue by issue. Results are AI simulations, clearly labeled, with the reasoning shown for every call. See the methodology for what that does and does not mean.

Analysis covering North Carolina

• The 2026 Senate map covers 62% of the country and 70% of the states

  Thirty-five of fifty states vote for Senate this year. Weighted by people rather than states the share drops, and that gap is the design of the chamber.

• Twenty-six states elect a senator and a governor on the same day in 2026

  The overlap between the Senate class and the gubernatorial cohort is a coincidence of two unrelated calendars, and it decides where money goes.

• Election night is reported in 3,142 counties and decided in 435 districts

  The unit America counts votes in and the unit America allocates House seats in are different shapes, and they do not nest inside each other.