Greg Murphy, a Republican congressman, leads Democrat Raymond Smith by 233 votes out of nearly 240,000 cast in North Carolina’s 3rd District. Murphy has 117,583 votes and Smith 117,350, a gap of 0.09%. Every precinct has reported, but nearly 3,000 provisional ballots have not been counted, and the district is one Republicans redrew last year with Black voters in mind.
Smith, 65, is Black, an Army veteran and a former state House member from Goldsboro who also sat on the Wayne County school board. The 3rd District, which stretches across eastern North Carolina, was reshaped in October 2025 when the General Assembly passed a new congressional map that, as WUNC reported, was meant to help Republicans pick up a seat. The target was the neighboring 1st District, held by Don Davis, a Black Democrat.
The arithmetic shows how. UNC’s Carolina Demography found that Black residents were 40.7% of the 1st District’s eligible voters before the map and 32.1% after. In the 3rd, the Black share of eligible voters went the other way, from 20.3% to 28.7%. Black voters were moved out of a district a Democrat held and into one a Republican held. Davis won reelection anyway, as WCTI reported. Murphy’s seat is the one still undecided.
The 2,944 provisional ballots are spread over nine counties, WCTI reported, and the most, 1,116, are in Pitt County, home to Greenville. Provisional ballots are cast by voters whose eligibility has to be checked after Election Day: someone whose name was not on the roll at their polling place, or who lacked ID. Each one is a voter who showed up and was told to wait. County boards will spend the coming week verifying them, and the official canvass is set for Nov. 13.
Murphy said he is not worried. “We’re ahead, and after all votes are counted and we have the most votes. That usually constitutes winning,” he told WCTI. Smith said he is “optimistic, energized, enthusiastic.” His campaign has opened a recount fund and said the race “remains too close to call and our campaign is actively discussing next steps.” It said it spent its resources on the campaign itself.
Under North Carolina rules, a margin under 1% lets the trailing candidate ask for a recount. It starts with a machine recount of every ballot. If that does not change the result, the trailing candidate has 24 hours to ask for a hand count of a random 3% of precincts, and a full hand count follows if the sample would flip the outcome. A challenger in a seat drawn to favor the incumbent should not have to pass a hat to make sure his voters were counted.
The standard here is simple. Every provisional ballot that meets the law should be counted, and counted in public, in Pitt County and the other eight. The Black voters who were moved into this district last year had no say in where the line fell. They can still decide who represents them. The county boards finish their work before the Nov. 13 canvass.
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