North Carolina kicks off some of first midterm primaries for key Senate and House races

The marquee matchup for the open US Senate seat in North Carolina will begin to resolve into focus Tuesday, with a well-known former Democratic governor and a Donald Trump-endorsed but untested Republican appearing to lead the field.

In the Democratic primary, former two-term governor Roy Cooper is ahead in recent polling against the slate of other candidates who have never held elected office. Cooper is widely seen among North Carolina’s Democrats as their best chance at flipping a Republican-controlled seat, now held by retiring US senator Thom Tillis, a conservative who has turned hard against the Trump administration on its handling of healthcare, defense and the Epstein file disclosures.

For Republicans, Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chair, leads the field in polling, with his closest competitor, representative Don Brown, in the single digits.

Polling in both primaries has been relatively scant and may have masked softness in conservative support for Whatley. About half of the Republican electorate remains undecided heading to voting booths Tuesday.

Whatley has Trump’s endorsement, but that hasn’t stopped the grumbling on the right.

“The president made a horrible mistake forcing Whatley on us,” said Brant Clifton, who publishes the Daily Haymaker, a conservative news site in North Carolina. Whatley has been closely connected to Tillis over the years, which sullies him among voters for whom Tillis has become unpopular, Clifton said. “Trump spends a lot of time talking about how bad Tillis sucks and expressing his anger at Tillis, but here he is. He’s got the RNC working to shove Mike Whatley down our throats, but Tom Tillis and his wife are responsible for elevating Whatley out of obscurity to the state Republican party chairmanship.”

North Carolina has unusual primary runoff rules. If the top candidate does not receive 30% of the vote, the second-place finisher can request a runoff.

Polling for a head-to-head matchup between Cooper and Whatley shows Cooper with a 10-point lead. That reflects both Cooper’s long relationship with North Carolina voters and a sharply-negative turn against the president among those voters. A poll commissioned last month from Change Research shows 50% of voters strongly disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, while about 60% believe their income is falling behind the cost of living and three-quarters saying that inflation and rising costs make them feel stressed.

But the choices for many North Carolina voters have been constrained by mid-decade redistricting, which widened the partisan advantage in several House seats to reduce the likelihood of Democratic gains.

Incumbent Democratic representative Don Davis, first elected in 2022, represents a district that had been majority-Black and safely Democratic for decades. Legislators redrew the district in 2025 to include significantly more Republican voters. Analysts believe the district now leans Republican based on historical voting patterns. Five Republican candidates are running in the primary Tuesday.

North Carolina’s fourth district in the Research Triangle area is overwhelmingly Democratic; the primary will likely determine the winner in November. That seat has become a nationalized primary battle between the incumbent, Valerie Foushee, and Durham county commissioner Nida Allam, who has framed herself as the more progressive choice.

Outside groups have spent more than $4m in the contest, making it one of the most expensive primaries this year. The American Priorities Super Pac has spent more than half a million dollars to highlight Allam’s opposition to military aid to Israel, while the Article One Pac – whose donors are associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) – has spent about $600,000 in support of Foushee. Political groups tied to the AI industry have also backed Foushee, messaging about “sensible AI regulation”.

With control of the US Senate and the House of Representatives coming down to a few districts and a few contests, North Carolina draws intense political attention at the federal level. But the most consequential race for North Carolina voters may be a state senate election in Rockingham county, where state senate president Phil Berger is in the fight of his political life against an insurgent challenger, Sam Page, the longtime county sheriff.

Midterm primaries are usually sleepy affairs. But turnout is approaching presidential election rates in Rockingham county. Trump has endorsed Berger and, according to multiple sources, tried to get Page out of the race by offering him a federal appointment if he would drop his challenge.

Berger is widely viewed as the most powerful Republican politician in North Carolina, which has now started to work against him in an intensely local race, Clifton said.

“They’re estimating that, when all is said and done, $10m would have been spent on the senate president’s behalf for a job that pays $17,000 a year,” Clifton said.