North Carolina is generally considered a lean Republican state, with the potential to swing Democratic. Trump carried North Carolina in 2016 by 3.6 percentage points. In 2008, Barack Obama narrowly defeated Republican candidate John McCain in North Carolina, 49.7 percent to 49.4 percent, becoming the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the state in 32 years. In 2012, North Carolina returned to the Republican column with Mitt Romney defeating Obama 50.3 percent to 48.3 percent. With a Partisan Voting Index of R+3, Republicans Thom Tillis and Richard Burr represent the state in the U.S. Senate. The governor’s seat is held by Democrat Roy Cooper, and 9 of the 13 Congressional seats are held by Republicans (one seat is vacant). Mobilization among Democratic Low Propensity Voters (LPVs) and Mid-High Propensity Voters (MHVs) will strengthen the outcomes for Democrats.

In 2016, Roy Cooper narrowly defeated then-incumbent Republican Governor Pat McCrory in the gubernatorial election. Cooper was the first challenger since 1850 to defeat a sitting North Carolina Governor. In January 2017, the Republican-dominated legislature passed bills to reduce his power in a special session before he took office. In 2018, Republicans lost their supermajority in both the State Senate and the State House. In the State Senate, Democrats gained 6 seats, reducing the Republican majority from 35-15 to 29-21, and in the State House, Democrats gained 10 seats, reducing the Republican majority from 75-45 to 65-55.

North Carolina has two ongoing electoral crises that are continuing from last year. Most recently is the 2018 9th Congressional District election in which the state board of elections voted to hold a new election because, according to the State Board of Elections and Ethics Reform Chair, “irregularities and improprieties...tainted the results...and cast doubt on its fairness.” Republican Mark Harris was initially declared the winner in the NC-9 race, defeating Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes on Election Day. But the result was not certified by the State Board of Elections because of apparent absentee ballot fraud by someone working for the Harris campaign. Harris did not run in the special election that was called to fill this seat on May 14, 2019.

The other major electoral crisis in North Carolina is that the district maps are the subject of ongoing legal actions and have been for nearly a decade. North Carolina has been arguing about the district lines that were drawn since 2011, after the 2010 Census, with challenges to the validity of the lines first on racial grounds and then on partisan grounds. North Carolina’s Congressional districts from 2011 were first challenged successfully as an illegal racial gerrymander. North Carolina Republicans were forced by a federal appeals court to draw new lines in 2016. That case came to a formal close in May 2017 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the maps did constitute an illegal racial gerrymander, but by that point, the districts had been redrawn, so the impact was moot.

Those new lines were then challenged on partisan grounds. The court system oversaw a process where the state legislature drew some new lines and a special court-appointed expert drew others. The trial court ruled that North Carolina should use the special master’s maps for 2018. The U.S. Supreme Court partially blocked the ruling in February 2018, deciding that the lines from the 2017 redraw were to be used in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, while the special master’s maps were to be used for the other six counties the master changed. These were the lines used in the 2018 elections.

The district court’s decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which began hearing arguments in March 2019 over whether the districts used to elect North Carolina’s members of the U.S. House of Representatives are constitutional. On September 3, 2019, the state court struck down the maps as unconstitutional and enjoined their use in future elections. The court ordered the North Carolina General Assembly to redraw the maps by September 19. On October 28, the court approved the remedial maps drawn by the General Assembly. On November 1, 2019, the plaintiffs filed a request for expedited appeal with the North Carolina Supreme Court, arguing that two county groupings in the remedial state house plan approved by the Wake County Superior Court remained gerrymandered. On November 15, the North Carolina Supreme Court declined to expedite. The plaintiffs then dropped their appeal. The remedial maps will now govern the 2020 elections, the same districts as those used during the 2018 elections when Republicans won nine of North Carolina’s 13 seats in the U.S. House.