November may be a long ways away, but North Carolinians can learn some lessons heading into the general election from last week’s primary election results.
The March 3 primary featured several high-profile upsets, above-average midterm primary turnout and a lot of campaign spending.
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The election results are unofficial until county boards of elections hold their canvasses on Friday, March. 13. Until then, here’s what we’ve learned.
One primary election, two stories
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton once said that, when it comes to elections, Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, said North Carolina state legislative politics may have flipped that maxim for the foreseeable future.
Nine incumbent state legislators lost their primaries, but they can’t all be lumped together, Jackson said.
The six Republican incumbent losses had a lot to do with local issues and relationships, said Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper, author of North Carolina politics primer "Anatomy of a Purple State."
For example, State Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, lost to farmer Darren Armstrong, likely partially because of a local disagreement over agricultural policy.
State Rep. Mark Pless, R-Haywood, was up against a popular school board member, Jimmy Rogers, and caught flack for several unpopular decisions made without local buy-in, including support of bills that impacted local zoning authority in his district.
In Rockingham and Guilford counties, State Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, is behind Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page by 23 votes heading into the county canvass. Page voters told Carolina Public Press that while they liked Berger, the longtime Senate leader seemed more focused on Raleigh issues than local ones.
Berger’s constituents also have not forgotten his failed push to legalize casinos and bring one into the district, which they generally oppose.
Other Republican incumbents who lost their primaries include State Sen. Chris Measmer, R-Cabarrus, State Rep. Reece Pyrtle, R-Rockingham, and State Rep. Kelly Hastings, R-Gaston.
Measmer was less than a year into his tenure after replacing former Sen. Paul Newton, who resigned to take a job offer at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Hastings was originally set to retire to spend more time with his family and business, but later got into the race. The 25-year-old political newcomer and pharmacist Caroline Eason defeated him with 53% of the vote. Attorney and business owner Seth Woodall clenched the Republican nomination against Pyrtle with 57% of the vote.
Since the rise of the Tea Party movement, there’s been a lingering “insurgent vibe” among Republicans that comes out on a regular basis, Jackson said.
“There is still a pretty high level of distrust between at least parts of the grassroots in the party and leadership who they accuse of being RINOS (Republicans in Name Only),” he said. “And so there's always the potential for an upset.”
Also on the Republican side, this cycle, a group of candidates ran in Republican state legislative primaries as part of North Carolina Educators on the Ballot. They switched their party registrations from Democrat or Unaffiliated to Republican to run in the primaries against incumbents on an education platform.
They argued that in North Carolina’s gerrymandered districts, the primary was the only place they could be truly competitive.
Republican voters didn’t buy what they were selling. The best performer of the six candidates lagged behind their Republican counterpart by 53 percentage points.
The Democrats stick together
The Democratic incumbent losses tell a different story than the Republican losses.
“Whereas you could see there's an anti-establishment mood, at least on the Republican side, the Democratic side, that was a triumph of the establishment,” Jackson said.
Democratic incumbents who lost didn’t just lose; they lost badly. Mecklenburg County State Reps. Carla Cunningham and Nasif Majeed lost by 48 and 42 percentage points, respectively, to challengers Rev. Rodney Sadler and Veleria Levy.
In northeastern North Carolina, State Rep. Shelly Willingham, D-Edgecombe, lost by 11 percentage points to Democratic challenger Patricia Smith.
Cunningham, Majeed and Willingham have one thing in common: they’ve voted with Republicans to override Democratic governors’ vetoes before. Gov. Josh Stein endorsed Sadler, and the party establishment backed all three challengers.
On a related note, State Rep. Rodney Pierce, D-Halifax, won reelection in a rematch against a former swing state legislator, Michael Wray, by a 29-percentage-point margin.
“The message is pretty clear,” Cooper said. “Democratic elites plus the Democratic voters wanted to go after Democrats who were weakening Gov. Stein’s veto, and Carla Cunningham obviously was the poster child for that, given that her speech on the floor of the General Assembly went viral.”
Primary turnout about as expected
While early voting turnout put North Carolina on a trajectory to record midterm primary turnout, that didn’t quite come to fruition.
Overall turnout — 19.7% — fell short of the 2022 primary’s 19.8% turnout, but was higher than the average midterm.
Based on early voting data, registered Democrats made up a significant portion of the turnout. Election Day party breakdowns won’t be available until after county canvasses are complete.
Common Cause Executive Director Sailor Jones said while turnout was relatively high, it’s important to put that number into perspective. Since 2022, North Carolina has gained nearly half a million registered voters, and he doesn’t think voter access has kept up.
Jones cited some cuts of early voting sites and dates, particularly Saturdays and Sundays, from 2022 to 2026. While the state gained 18 early voting sites overall, he said it’s a net loss when considering the increase in voters and interest in using weekends for early voting.
After early voting, several election directors credited relatively high turnout to voters’ increased understanding of the importance of primaries.
Jones agrees, to an extent. He said based on his experience, North Carolina voters are more aware of the impact of gerrymandering on their state than most Americans.
“So North Carolinians are very aware that their vote not only matters in a primary, but in many cases, because of those gerrymandered districts, matters more because the outcome of that election is predetermined based on those partisan races in either the Republican or Democratic primary,” Jones said.
He credits higher Democratic turnout to state, national and international politics. The primary was North Carolinians’ first chance to respond to the policies of the Trump administration and the 2025 legislative session, he said.
Jackson also said national politics probably led to increased Democratic turnout.
“Fear and loathing drives turnout, and Democrats are feeling a bit more fear and loathing right now, since they're the ones not in power in Washington, and that will get you out of your seat and get you up to vote,” Jackson said.
Jackson and Cooper would caution onlookers from predicting a blue wave in November based on Democratic primary turnout. While it’s clear there is enthusiasm within the party, past elections including 2020 have shown that a win in the primaries doesn’t necessarily mean a win in the general election in North Carolina.
Primary turnout is still fairly low, with fewer than one in five North Carolinians casting a ballot. Some counties bucked the trend. In Mitchell County, 44% of voters showed up. Hyde, Graham, Beaufort, Northampton, Bertie and Tyrrell counties surpassed 30% turnout.
With the exception of Hyde County, all of the top-turnout counties had both U.S. House primaries and competitive local races for sheriff, board of education or board of commissioners. Hyde County had a local sales tax referendum on the ballot.
Particularly in rural areas, sheriffs are often the most powerful people in the county, Jackson said. They can drive turnout, particularly when there is an interesting race at the top of the ticket, he added.
Money, Berger and the budget
Berger outspent Page by millions, but still may be the eventual primary loser.
That could be a lesson for future high-profile state legislative races, particularly in this case, where no voter was more than a few people removed from Berger and Page, Cooper said.
“By having state and national interests sink money into Berger’s race, it sort of cuts against the idea that he is about local people,” he said.
Money is an advantage, but it can’t solve all problems, Jackson echoed.
“Once you've spent a certain amount of money, you're maybe turning people off as much as you are activating them with your sixth or seventh or eighth or ninth or 10th contact,” he said.
However, a race like the U.S. Senate contest between former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley will still revolve around spending, Jackson said. To win in North Carolina, where Republicans have a base advantage, he said Democrats probably have to raise at least two or three times as much as their opponents to win.
The final results of the Berger and Page race, after the canvass and resolution of any recounts or election protests, have statewide implications. North Carolina did not pass a comprehensive budget last year, primarily because of a disagreement between Berger and Republican House Speaker Destin Hall.
Andy Jackson thinks there’s about a 50% chance that if Berger loses, he will step down and let someone else take his leadership position. In that case, a new Senate leader might be open to passing a budget fairly quickly, he said.
Cooper has a different take. If Berger loses, he thinks North Carolinians will be waiting even longer for a budget. Hall will have no reason to negotiate, for one.
“I can’t imagine Phil Berger just laying down,” he added. “It seems to run counter to what he believes. I mean, if anything, as we've seen from (U.S. Sen.) Thom Tillis, when you're not facing reelection, you feel more open to going with what you want and what you believe and ignoring the politics of it.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.