Despite a strong lead, Roy Cooper is urging caution in NC’s Senate race | Opinion
Democrats haven’t won a U.S. Senate race in North Carolina since 2008. But with fewer than 45 days until the 2026 midterm elections, they’re increasingly confident that this will be the year it finally flips.
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Poll after poll shows their nominee, former Gov. Roy Cooper, with a strong lead over his Republican opponent, Michael Whatley, that has yet to budge.
But Cooper himself is taking a more cautious approach.
A recent piece on CNN asked whether Democrats are too confident about North Carolina, given their history of losing federal races. Cooper told CNN his biggest concern is that people are taking this race for granted.
“This is going to be anywhere from a 1% to a 3% race,” Cooper said.
Some Republicans took this to mean that Cooper isn’t confident in his own victory. But David McLennan, a longtime political scientist and pollster in North Carolina, said it’s a wise strategy on Cooper’s part.
“They don’t want complacent Democrats staying home, so from a purely campaign strategy point of view, you know, hearing it’s in the bag is not good for their campaign.”
It’s also just about being realistic. North Carolina is a purple state, one that neither party tends to win by large margins. The last four U.S. Senate races in North Carolina were decided by an average of 3 percentage points, which is a far cry from polls that show Cooper leading by double digits.
Besides, Republicans aren’t giving up on North Carolina yet, even as they publicly and privately acknowledge that their chances of keeping the seat are getting slim. Whatley has room to improve with Republican voters, and most polls show a modest number of likely voters who say they’re still undecided.
President Donald Trump visited Gastonia this week to rally alongside Whatley, encouraging his base to “pretend I’m on the ballot just one more time.” Republican super PACs are sending more cash, saturating the airwaves with anti-Cooper ads in the weeks leading up to Election Day.
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Still, even that may not be enough to close the gap. The race will likely tighten, but it will take a lot for Republicans to erase Cooper’s current lead. Whatley has not led in a single poll, and Cooper has been polling at or above 50% for months. If Cooper maintains that level of support, it won’t matter how much Whatley can gain. To win, Whatley doesn’t just have to run up his own numbers — he has to drag down Cooper’s, too. So the Republican strategy, in campaign ads and speeches, has been to attack Cooper as much as possible.
But it doesn’t help that Whatley is running in a rather narrow lane. The president’s unpopularity and the GOP’s disadvantage on most major issues have given him very little to work with — which is why the vast majority of his attacks on Cooper have focused on crime. (They’re very often false, too.)
“That’s an important issue, but is it enough of an issue to overcome the president’s unpopularity and the fact that a majority of people think Democrats are better on the economy? I don’t think it will be,” McLennan said.
McLennan said that the next couple of weeks are a critical phase for the Whatley campaign. If the polls don’t show much movement, Republicans may move elsewhere, and invest their resources in tighter races. New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate race, for example, has become surprisingly close, enough for it to be considered a toss-up. Republicans may not have to triage North Carolina if they can offset the loss by flipping a Democratic-held seat there.
We’re used to our Senate races being fairly close, but we’re also used to them being much more competitive. In part, that’s because most of our Senate races have taken place during election cycles that have generally favored Republicans. It’s been nearly 20 years since a North Carolina Senate race coincided with a political environment that heavily favored Democrats.
So it’s possible that, in the end, the final result actually won’t be as close as people expect. A Senate race in which either candidate, let alone the Democratic one, leads by an average of nearly 9 points in late September is unfamiliar territory for North Carolina. But Cooper knows that in purple states, there are no guarantees.
Deputy Opinion Editor Paige Masten covers politics and the 2026 elections for The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer.
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