North Carolina Poised for 3rd Straight Gubernatorial Election between Statewide Elected Officials

A dive into yet another measure of the Tar Heel State’s battleground state status

As Democrats seek to flip New Hampshire’s open gubernatorial seat in 2024, the party will also be making a strong effort to defend its own open seat in North Carolina where Governor Roy Cooper is term-limited.

The filing deadline for next March’s primary ended last Friday with sitting state Attorney General and Democratic frontrunner Josh Stein (pictured) set to face four candidates including former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Morgan.

The expected Republican nominee, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, will square off against two opponents including state Treasurer Dale Folwell.

If Stein and Robinson (or Folwell) emerge victorious from their respective primaries, it will mark the third consecutive cycle in which sitting elected statewide officeholders met in North Carolina’s gubernatorial general election.

In 2016, four-term Attorney General Roy Cooper defeated Governor Pat McCrory. Four years later, Governor Cooper defeated GOP Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest.

Both major parties in North Carolina have nominated sitting statewide elected officials in only one other cycle since Reconstruction.

That occurred in 1988 when Republican Governor Jim Martin defeated Democratic Lieutenant Governor Robert Jordan to lead the state for a second term.

Of course, part of the reason North Carolina is seeing more of these impressive resumes on both sides of the ballot in gubernatorial elections is because the state is so evenly divided – with both parties winning seats up and down the ballot.

For example, in 2020, Republicans won six statewide offices while Democrats claimed four. All 10 of these state executive elections were decided by less than eight points, and eight of them were decided by less than five points.

It should also be noted that North Carolina governors could not run for a second full term prior to 1972. But that is only part of the story.

Across the 23 election cycles from 1884 through 1972, only four gubernatorial nominees were sitting statewide officeholders:

• 1916: Democratic Attorney General Thomas Bickett
• 1948: Democratic Commissioner of Agriculture Kerr Scott
• 1956: (Ascended) Governor Luther Hodges
• 1968: Democratic Lieutenant Governor Bob Scott

All four were elected.

By contrast, across the last 12 cycles from 1972 through 2020, a total of 15 nominees were sitting elected statewide officers, with at least one on the ballot each cycle – including nine non-gubernatorial incumbents:

• 1976: Democratic Lieutenant Governor Jim Hunt (elected)
• 1984: Democratic Attorney General Rufus Edmisten (lost)
• 1988: Democratic Lieutenant Governor Robert Jordan (lost)
• 1992: Republican Lieutenant Governor Jim Gardner (lost)
• 2000: Democratic Attorney General Mike Easley (elected)
• 2008: Democratic Lieutenant Governor Bev Perdue (elected)
• 2012: Democratic Lieutenant Governor Walter Dalton (lost)
• 2016: Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper (elected)
• 2020: Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest (lost)

Democratic Governors Jim Hunt (1980, 1996), Mike Easley (2004), and Roy Cooper (2020) and Republican Governors Jim Martin (1988) and Pat McCrory (2016) also were renominated during this period.

In addition to electing statewide officials from both parties, North Carolina’s battleground state status in recent decades is also evident from its U.S. Senate elections.

Since 1990, North Carolina has the lowest average margin of victory in the country for the office at just 5.5 points with 11 of its 12 contests decided by single digits during this span. [Democrats have come up on the short end of the stick in all but two of these dozen elections].

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