Turnout in last week’s election rose substantially in Mecklenburg County, which has more registered Democrats than any other North Carolina county. But the county still lags many of the state’s other large, urban counties, such as Wake County.
In the 2022 midterms, Mecklenburg County’s turnout was among the state’s worst. At 45% of registered voters, Mecklenburg was six percentage points lower than the state average. Republican Ted Budd defeated Democrat Cheri Beasley in the U.S. Senate race that year.
Local and state Democrats saw that as a critical failure — and a reason the party repeatedly fell short in statewide races — a and set out to mobilize voters.
In 2026, 52% of Mecklenburg voters cast ballots. That was just slightly below the state average of almost 54%, a relative improvement of around four percentage points compared to their 2022 performance vs. the average.
Mecklenburg Democratic Party chair Wesley Harris said Mecklenburg Democrats blew past their goal of giving Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper 300,000 votes. The actual number was more than 333,000, or 75% of all ballots cast in the county.
Cooper defeated Republican Michael Whatley by 19 percentage points.
With the 2028 elections already looming, Harris said Democrats need to keep investing in turnout efforts to keep momentum from the midterms into the presidential election. He said the political environment in the next presidential election won’t be as favorable for Democrats as 2026's historic blue wave.
“That means we have to really invest in these low-turnout areas these next two years,” Harris said. “So that we temper some of that fallout from unaffiliateds who may not break quite as heavy towards us in 2028.”
Harris said he is still waiting to determine if the county hit his own goal of 55% turnout among registered Democrats.
Mecklenburg still has room to improve.
Turnout among all voters in Democratic Wake and Durham counties was about 60% this year. It was 55% in Guilford and Forsyth counties.
All of those counties are Democratic strongholds, but Mecklenburg differs in key ways, with a more diverse population and some of the highest percentages of non-English-speaking and foreign-born residents in the state. Mecklenburg also has a lower average income than Wake. While voter registration drives have been able to get many people registered to vote, it’s been harder to make sure they follow through and vote.
