Roy Cooper Projected to Flip North Carolina Senate Seat

Roy Cooper was projected to defeat Republican Michael Whatley in North Carolina’s Nov. 3 Senate election, flipping a seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis and marking the state’s first Democratic Senate victory since 2008. The result remained unofficial pending the state’s canvass. An unofficial tally recorded at 2:32 a.m. EST Nov. 4 showed Cooper with 2,462,440 votes, or 58.67%, and Whatley with 1,640,368 votes, or 39.09%. Election officials said totals could change as ballots were reviewed. North Carolina county boards were scheduled to canvass the vote at 11 a.m. EST Nov. 13, followed by a state canvass scheduled for Nov. 24. Cooper, a former two-term governor, will succeed Tillis, who announced in June 2025 that he would not seek reelection. Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman, was backed by President Donald Trump and was seeking elected office for the first time, according to campaign coverage. Cooper centered his campaign on household costs, including groceries, housing, healthcare and fuel. His grocery proposals included tariff relief, stronger competition enforcement in grocery and food-processing markets, and limits on algorithms that...