Roy Cooper won North Carolina’s open Senate seat Tuesday night, defeating Republican Michael Whatley and handing Democrats their first Senate win in the state since 2008. Early returns had Cooper near 67% to Whatley’s 30% when the race was called.
Black voters were at the center of the worry going in. They made up about 2 in 10 North Carolina voters in the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections and the 2022 Senate race, according to AP VoteCast. Roughly 4 in 10 of them live in small towns or rural areas, and that is where Democrats have most often come up short.
The AP reported in April that turnout fell more between 2020 and 2024 in counties with larger Black populations. In counties where Black voters are 30% to 40% of the electorate, it dropped more than 3 percentage points. In counties with smaller Black populations, it dropped about 1 point. Cooper, 68, a native of rural Nash County, held roundtables with Black farmers, business owners and civic leaders in eastern North Carolina.
Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chairman, warned that Cooper would align with the “woke mob” and said “He’s going to fight for criminals.” It did not carry him. According to the AP Voter Poll, most North Carolina voters thought Whatley was too supportive of Trump. Cooper said he ran because he saw “two or three things happening almost every single day that reached a new level of chaos and recklessness.”
Republicans pulled funding from Whatley’s campaign as Cooper held his lead. The win puts Democrats on a path to the four seats they need for a Senate majority, with Maine, Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska among their other targets.
Black voters in the rural counties where turnout slipped should not be treated as a base to collect every other November. Cooper’s win gives him the standing to answer them with policy, and the first test is whether those eastern North Carolina roundtables show up in his agenda when he takes his seat in January.
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