Democrats flipped at least five North Carolina seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and narrowly led in one more with all election day ballots counted.
In each case, the seat flipped had been widely seen as safely Republican, with boundaries drawn to give GOP candidates a significant margin of victory.
The seats that flipped include NC's Sixth Congressional District, Ninth Congressional District, 11th Congressional District, 13th Congressional District and 14th Congressional District.
At the end of election night, 11-term incumbent GOP Congresswoman Virginia Foxx trailed Democratic challenger Chuck Hubbard in the state's Fifth Congressional District by 99 votes. That race is too close to call, considering provisional ballots and the likelihood of a recount.
In 2024, Republicans' narrowest margin of victory in any of the districts in which they trailed after this year's election night was Chuck Edwards' 13-point win in the 11th Congressional District.
This year, Democrat Jamie Ager won that district by about 16 points, defeating N.C. House of Representatives Jennifer Balkcom who succeeded Edwards as the GOP candidate after he dropped out of the race amid a harassment scandal.
The Democrat-led race that Republicans won by the largest margin in 2024 was the Triad's Sixth Congressional District, where Addison McDowell won by 39 percentage points two years ago.
This year, Democratic candidate and High Point Mayor Cyril Jefferson won the seat by about 2.3 percentage points, or more than 6,000 votes.
A pair of the more prominent Republicans who lost included Richard Hudson in the Ninth Congressional District and Tim Moore in the 14th Congressional District.
Hudson, the fifth-highest ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives, leads the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans. He lost to Richard Ojeda, a U.S. Army veteran and former Democratic member of the West Virginia State Senate.
Moore has served one term in Congress after five as Speaker of the N.C. House of Representatives, the longest anyone has held that position.
He lost to Democrat Lakesha Womack, who won precincts in the fast-growing parts of western Mecklenburg County while Moore won more rural counties west of Charlotte.
And in the state's 13th Congressional District, Democrat Paul Barringer defeated incumbent Brad Knott.
Democrats also held onto NC's First Congressional District in the eastern part of the state, with Democrat Don Davis defeating Laurie Buckhout for the second consecutive cycle.
This year's race was slightly different than 2024's, though, because Republicans redrew the district's boundaries in an effort to make it more favorable to Republican candidates.
Nevertheless, Davis won by more votes this year than in 2024.
In 2024, Davis won by about 6,300 votes. This year, he won by 7,594 in a district that was meant to favor his opponent.
In her concession remarks, Buckhout urged Davis to fight for the district, saying, "We're going to be watching him, and I don't want this to be the forgotten district. We deserve better. We deserve nice things. We deserve nice roads. We deserve jobs."
