Democrat Roy Cooper won North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat Tuesday, according to a race call from The Associated Press. Cooper, the former governor, becomes the first Democrat elected to the Senate in North Carolina since 2008.
Cooper defeated Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chairman who President Trump picked to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis. Cooper had about 60% of votes in early returns, as of around 9:15 p.m.
"Tonight, I am deeply grateful for and humbled by the confidence and trust you have once again placed in me," Cooper said at a victory rally in Raleigh. "I am determined that no matter the challenges that confront me, I will be an independent voice ready to work with anyone to do what's right for this amazing state that has given me so much."
Whatley conceded the race shortly after AP called Cooper's win. "I just placed a phone call into Gov. Cooper and congratulated him on his big win tonight," Whatley told the crowd at his election night event in Gastonia. "While the results today are not what we’ve been working for, my commitment to you and this great state remains as strong as ever."
Cooper and national Democratic Party groups significantly outspent Whatley and Republicans. A few weeks before the election, national GOP organizations pulled TV ads from North Carolina and redirected their money to other battlegrounds like Kansas.
Total ad spending in the race was around $90 million, according to data from AdImpact, far less than the hundreds of millions initially predicted by some experts.
Cooper, who served as governor from 2017 to 2024, focused his campaign on affordability issues. Each campaign stop he made across the state was promoted as the "Make Stuff Cost Less tour."
"Tonight, guys, we told Washington loud and clear that North Carolinians will always matter more than the billionaires and the insiders," Cooper said in his victory speech. "Tonight we showed the country that when everyday people come together, we can make change. Tonight we let everyone know that we are just getting started."
Meanwhile, Whatley’s campaign centered on crime and immigration issues. He criticized Cooper over a COVID-era legal settlement that released inmates from state prisons to address overcrowding during the pandemic. But polls indicated that the economy — not crime — was the top concern for North Carolina voters this year.
The race was Whatley’s first run for elected office, and Cooper’s campaign painted him as a lobbyist for "big oil" who would become a rubber stamp for Trump in the Senate.
Patrick Sebastian, a Republican strategist who did not work on the Whatley campaign, said his party’s candidate should have made the economy a bigger focus.
"Really, it's the economy is Issue A and then Issue B is probably government corruption, that people are following the most,” Sebastian told the WUNC Politics Podcast ahead of the election. “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."
The North Carolina Senate race was initially expected to be one of the most competitive – and most expensive – in the country, but Whatley never led in polling, and Cooper’s lead widened over the course of the race.
Even as pro-Whatley TV ads largely disappeared in October, Trump and Vice President Vance came to North Carolina for multiple rallies in the final weeks of the campaign. Sebastian says those visits likely helped improve base turnout for GOP voters but weren’t enough to save Whatley’s campaign.
Trump himself even suggested that Whatley might lose, saying at one North Carolina rally that Cooper is “going to become your senator and it's crazy."
Tillis announced he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2025, after Trump threatened him with a primary challenger for failing to support the president’s tax cut and spending bill. Rather than campaign for Whatley, he’s been promoting his new book criticizing fellow Republicans.
