Roy Cooper, the former Democratic governor, won North Carolina’s open Senate seat on Tuesday night. The Associated Press called the race at 8:23 p.m. Eastern, and NBC News and ABC News projected the same result.
It is the first Senate win for a North Carolina Democrat since 2008.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats for a majority. Republicans hold the chamber 53 to 47, and 51 is the number for control because Vice President JD Vance breaks a 50-50 tie. Cooper’s seat is one of the four.
The seat opened after a Trump threat and was filled by a Trump recruit. The timeline below puts the sequence in order.
| When | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Sen. Thom Tillis says he will not run again, after Trump threatens a primary challenge over Tillis’s opposition to the president’s tax and spending bill | NPR |
| Before the primary | Trump urges Michael Whatley, the former RNC chair, to run for the seat | NBC News |
| March 3, 2026 | Cooper and Whatley win their party primaries | CBS News |
| October | At a rally in the state, Trump says of Cooper: “He’s going to become your senator.” | NBC News |
| Closing weeks | A top Republican super PAC cancels its ad spending in the race, and national GOP groups move their TV money to other states, Kansas among them | NBC News, NPR |
| Nov. 3, 8:23 p.m. ET | The AP calls the race for Cooper, and NBC News and ABC News project the same result | Washington Examiner, ABC News |
The Money Left Before the Voters Did
Tillis chose not to run, and Trump’s pick for his seat was a first-time candidate. Whatley had never run for any office, and he never led in a poll.
Cooper was governor from 2017 to 2024. He skipped a contested primary and ran a “Make Stuff Cost Less” tour on prices. Whatley ran on crime and immigration.
The race was once expected to be among the most competitive and most expensive in the country. Republican money read it faster than Republican rallies did. A top super PAC canceled its ad spending in the closing weeks, and NBC ties the retreat to Cooper’s solid polling lead and the pull of more conservative ground elsewhere. The national groups that moved their TV money went to other battlegrounds, Kansas among them. Cooper and national Democratic groups significantly outspent Whatley.
Trump and Vance still held multiple rallies in the state. At one in October, Trump said of Cooper, “He’s going to become your senator.”
Voters had soured on the economy and the Iran war, and Whatley could not put distance between himself and an increasingly unpopular president. The senator he was running to replace did not help. Tillis spent the stretch promoting a book that criticizes fellow Republicans.
We think this is one of the cleanest lines the night will draw from a presidential decision to a lost seat. Trump’s threat opened it, Trump’s pick lost it, and Republican money had given up on it before Tuesday.
Three Seats Short
The arithmetic is plain. Democrats hold 47 seats and need 51. Cooper’s win takes them to 48, provided every seat they already held stays theirs.
Two of those holds have been called. Jon Ossoff was projected to win re-election in Georgia, and ABC projects Chris Pappas holding New Hampshire. Ohio and Texas, two more Republican-held seats Democrats are trying to flip, were not called.
ABC’s count around 8:30 p.m. Eastern had Sherrod Brown ahead of Jon Husted in Ohio, 57 percent to 39 percent with 35 percent of the expected vote in. In Texas it had James Talarico ahead of Ken Paxton, 59 percent to 39 percent with 24 percent in. Those are early counts, and neither race was called.
With 56 percent of the vote in, Cooper led Whatley 66.8 percent to 31.6 percent, the Washington Examiner reports. Early returns are not a final margin.
Cooper’s win does not decide control. It does mean three seats, not four, stand between Democrats and the majority. We will mark each one as it is called on our live results page.