North Carolina’s Roy Cooper’s election could help determine control of the next Senate.

Every few years, North Carolina offers Democrats the same deal: spend your campaign money here, organize your campaign here, and believe this time it will be different.

The state is giving them a reason for hope. Growth is changing the shape of suburbs. Urban areas like Raleigh, Charlotte and the Research Triangle are attracting more Democratic voters. The statewide race remains close.

And in elections that determine power in Washington, North Carolina typically rejects Democrats.

This contradiction is now at the center of the battle for control of the Senate in 2026, when all contested seats could be important in determining the next Congress’s majority.

Democrats’ narrow path back to the majority passes through a handful of Republican-held seats, and few have as much impact as seats in the Tar Heel state. Former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is running against Republican Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman and a close ally of President Donald Trump, for the vacant seat vacated by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.

Democrats have not won a presidential or senatorial election in North Carolina since 2008. Republicans have maintained this course through competitive election cycles, expensive campaigns and repeated predictions that demographic shifts would move the state to the left.

However, in each of the past three presidential elections, Democrats have won the gubernatorial election.

The same district that gave Trump a 3.2-point victory in 2024 gave Democrat Josh Stein, who was running against Republican candidate Mark Robinson, a 14-point victory in the same day’s gubernatorial race. Robinson had faced calls to withdraw from the race after controversial comments on civil rights, women’s rights and other issues surfaced. The state’s 10 elected executive bodies, known as the state boards, are evenly divided between five Democrats and five Republicans.

“It’s in North Carolina’s DNA. It just splits the ticket differently than other states,” said Christopher Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University who is not related to Roy Cooper. “While the rest of the South went from overwhelmingly Democratic to overwhelmingly Republican, and then some states like Virginia and Georgia moved back, North Carolina was never as Democratic as its southern neighbors.”

“The Senate’s control could extend to North Carolina,” Christopher Cooper said.

The history of split tickets in North Carolina goes back many generations. In 1972, when Democrats still controlled much of the South, the state elected its first Republican governor in decades. The government has long judged Raleigh and Washington by different rules.

“Democrats in North Carolina win federal elections when they compete for North Carolina. Republicans win when they compete for Democrats across the country,” said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College. “That tension is what baseball as a whole in 2026 is all about.”

Voters still judge Democrats differently in races for governor, attorney general and other state offices, Christopher Cooper said, but races can focus on issues such as ability, schools, storms, Medicaid, jobs and local roots.

Localizing Senate races is even more difficult. The job is national in nature, and the winner helps decide which party controls the chamber, which judges are confirmed, how much power the president has, and which issues reach the floor.

“The Senate race almost immediately becomes a battle for party leadership,” Christopher Cooper said. “Even in North Carolina, Senate candidates can’t completely escape Washington, because Washington is their job.”

Eric Heberlig, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said Republicans have understood that dynamic for years.

“The question that Republicans are framing this issue with is not whether voters like Gov. Roy Cooper,” Heberrig said. “It’s whether they want a new Democrat to help Chuck Schumer control the Senate.”

This argument makes Mr. Cooper’s biggest strength, his clear, statewide brand, a secondary issue. If it’s a battle for control of Washington, Republicans have the advantage.

“North Carolinians may have voted for Roy Cooper for governor, but they have refused to let Democrats run for president or the Senate because they often don’t want national Democratic policies as much,” Heberlig said.

Democrats have also been betting for more than a decade that North Carolina’s growth would make it resemble Virginia, which is more suburban, more diverse, more college-educated and more Democratic.

Some of that theory has become reality. But it’s not enough to overcome Republican power in other parts of the state.

According to the Census Bureau, North Carolina’s population will reach 11.2 million in 2025, making it the ninth largest state in the United States. Since April 2020, the state has added about 757,000 residents, or about 395 people per day, according to the state Office of Budget and Management. From July 2024 to July 2025, the state ranked No. 1 in the nation for domestic migration, with a net increase of about 84,000 residents from other states, according to OSBM.

This growth has strengthened Democratic support in Wake, Mecklenburg and Durham counties, and made formerly Republican-leaning suburban areas more competitive, especially among voters with college degrees and young professionals.

The 2024 presidential election showed the limits of that growth. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won by large margins in Democratic strongholds such as Wake, Mecklenburg and Buncombe counties. Still, Trump won the state by more than 180,000 votes.

Part of the reason is that North Carolina’s urban shift extends to rural areas.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of the 2020 Census, North Carolina had approximately 3.5 million rural residents, second only to Texas, and accounted for 33% of the state’s population.

“If Democrats are to have any chance statewide, especially in federal elections, we have to stop the bleeding,” Bitzer said. “We don’t need to win rural Republicans, but we do need to mitigate the losses there.”

The challenge for Democrats is not just older rural conservatives. In many rural areas, the younger voters they replace remain culturally and politically conservative.

At the same time, younger voters are less likely to register with a political party. Unaffiliated or unaffiliated voters are now the largest registered bloc in North Carolina, according to the State Board of Elections. But many are not true moderates, Heverlig said. They consistently lean towards one political party but reject that label.

“We don’t have a ton of moderates in the state,” Hevelig said. “Voters of both parties decide whether to vote at all, not who they vote for.”

Essentially, North Carolina remains close because two large coalitions are fighting over turnout and vote share, and small changes can sway the outcome.

Roy Cooper’s strength so far has been his ability to reduce Democratic losses in rural areas, and this ability could be more important in North Carolina than in most other battleground states.

“(Roy Cooper) comes from rural North Carolina and communicates with rural voters in a way that is honest and doesn’t come across as patronizing,” Christopher Cooper said.

The other challenge for Democrats and North Carolina’s beluga whales has become a matter of timing.

In 2010, Democrats encountered a national Republican wave sparked by the Tea Party movement. In 2014, the domestic environment once again favored Republicans. In 2020, Cal Cunningham’s fight against Tillis was marred by a personal scandal late in the season. In 2022, Cheri Beasley lost to Ted Budd in a midterm election shaped by inflation, Biden’s approval ratings, and Republican attacks on crime and the economy.

“It was a subject of bad luck,” Christopher Cooper said. “Almost consistently, Democrats come into the North Carolina Senate race when they have the wind in their face, not the wind against them.”

Former President Barack Obama won North Carolina in 2008 by just over 14,000 votes, the narrowest margin of any state he carried. Mitt Romney won by about 2 points in 2012, Trump won by 3.7 points in 2016, just over 1 point in 2020, and again by about 3 points in 2024.

Mr. Cooper has advantages that Democrats tend to lack in North Carolina: name recognition, a statewide victory, credibility beyond big cities and a potentially more friendly national environment. A poll of 600 likely voters conducted May 10-11 by the Carolina Journal and Harper Polling and released in May showed Mr. Cooper leading Mr. Whatley by 11 points.

But Democrats have previously recognized early promise in North Carolina. The state has come close to winning many times in the past, only to slip away after the Senate race became a referendum.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done in racing,” Bitzer said. “The question in 2026 is whether such local trust can survive the nationalization of Senate elections.”