The 2026 Election Begins Today

by Christopher Cooper

Sometime today, the first mail ballots for the 2026 primary were sent out to North Carolina voters, marking the official beginning of the 2026 elections.

If this seems early, that’s because it is. North Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas hold their elections on March 3—the first in the nation. North Carolina sends out the first match of mail ballots 60 days before the election, whereas Texas and Arkansas wait until 45 and 46 days before the election, respectively. In person early voting begins in North Carolina on February 12, four days before Arkansas and five days before Texas.

No matter how you slice it, the 2026 election election begins in North Carolina. And it begins today.

Please Ignore Internal Polls (Again)

by Christopher Cooper

Over the last few weeks, two internal polls have made news in North Carolina politics. The first purported to show President Pro-Tempore of the North Carolina Senate, Phil Berger down by ten percentage points to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page in the Republican primary for Senate District 26. The second (released today) showed Democrat Jamie Ager up one percentage point against Republican Chuck Edwards in the General Election for North Carolina's 11th congressional district

Please ignore those internal polls. Please also ignore the ones that will inevitably come from their opponents that offer a different look.

Regardless of whether those results reinforce or challenge your preferred outcome, they are not giving you reliable information, nor is that their goal. Their release is intended to help their candidate. I don’t blame the candidates or their campaigns for releasing these polls. It’s smart politics.

And, if you follow elections solely as a window into palace intrigue, or as a way to reinforce what you want to be true then, by all means, have at them. But, if you follow politics and elections news to get a better understanding of how we are governed, then paying attention to internal polls will do you more harm than good.3

I wrote about this back in 2022 when an incumbent member of Congress named Madison Cawthorn released an internal poll showing him with a commanding lead in the Republican primary—the very same primary he ultimately lost.

Rather than re-hashing all of this again with new examples, I'll point you to the 2022 post on this blog.  The names may have changed, but rationale remains. 

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Dr. Christopher Cooper is the Madison Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs and Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University 

There are now more Republican registered voters in North Carolina than Democrats. What Does This Mean for Our State's Politics?

 by Christopher Cooper

Normally, the weekly voter registration updates on the North Carolina State Board of Elections are met with a collective shrug from all but the most dedicated, data oriented, and dorky observers of the state’s politics.1

There have really only been three notable exceptions to that rule: September 2017 when Unaffiliated crossed Republican to become the second largest group of registered voters in the state, March 2022 when Unaffiliated became the largest number of registered voters in the state and yesterday when, for the first time in the state’s history, registered Republicans outnumbered registered Democrats in North Carolina.

In October I wrote a piece for The Assembly about this shift—what it means and why it matters. I encourage you to read it in the context of what just happened.2 Some primary things to keep in mind are:

A Softening, But Not a Flip: North Carolina's Partisan Identification Shifted Late in 2025

By Michael Bitzer

With 2025 concluded and the start of what will be an intense 2026, I was reviewing the past year’s Catawba College-YouGov surveys of North Carolinians (1) to see what interesting patterns or trends occurred over the year.

One thing that stood out to me (because of its potential implications for electoral volatility in a presidential-to-midterm transition year) was a fairly consistent pattern of the state’s partisan identification—that is, until the final survey of 2025.

As part of a standard set of questions asked in each Catawba-YouGov poll, respondents can initally say what their partisan identification is: Democrat, Republican, Independent, other, or not sure. Another question asks for the respondents’ ‘strength’ of their initial partisan identification, meaning for partisans ‘are you strong or not very strong’ in your identity, while among those who initially say they are ‘Independent,’ do they lean to one party or the other, or do they consider themselves a ‘pure’ independent.

Starting with the first Catawba-YouGov Survey in August 2024, the partisan self-identifications of the surveys showed a pretty consistent pattern over the past year, until the last survey.

Figure 1: Catawba-YouGov 2024-2025 Surveys with initial partisan identifications among North Carolina Respondents.

'Tis the Season: The 5 Most Important Stories from North Carolina Politics in 2025

by Christopher Cooper

There are year-end lists for everything—music,1 books, architecture, sports, longform journalism, and, of course, politics. So, why not one more?

Here’s my take on the five most important North Carolina politics stories from 2025. I selected stories that tell us something bigger about the state of our politics, and will matter long after 2025 comes to a close. Is this “the” definitive, list? Absolutely not—I encourage you to read and listen to others. But these five stories all have long-term implications for how we understand North Carolina politics.

Some Thoughts on One of the Titans of NC Politics: Former Democratic N.C. Governor Jim Hunt

By Michael Bitzer

News of the passing of former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt came as I was driving home yesterday. Stuck in rainy traffic on I-85, I had time to reflect on the impact of this titan of North Carolina politics—one of two politicians who shaped not just the final decades of the twentieth century in this state, but whose legacy continues nearly a quarter-century after his last days in elected office.

During the 1960s and 1970s, North Carolina—and the once Solid Democratic South—was undergoing profound political transformation, as were the nation’s two major parties. Unlike many other Southern states (save Tennessee), North Carolina had long experienced a measure of political competitiveness. From the beginning of the twentieth century through its midpoint, the state featured a dominant Democratic Party alongside a meaningful Republican opposition, largely concentrated in the upper northwestern mountain counties and extending into the central Piedmont.

Why Campus Voting Sites Matter: The Case of Western Carolina University

by Christopher Cooper

The Jackson County (NC) Board of Elections is deciding whether to keep the early voting site at Western Carolina University. 

Thanks to the NCSBE, we have a wealth of information about voting and elections in North Carolina so I decided to analyze a bit of it and see what it reveals about the effectiveness of the site--and what might happen if it's eliminated. 

 You can find it here: https://chriscooperwcu.substack.com/p/why-campus-voting-sites-matter-the

 

 

The Election Season is Officially Here in NC

by Christopher Cooper

Yesterday marked the beginning of candidate filing for the 2026 election in North Carolina.

In many ways, the next two weeks will be more interesting and consequential than election day itself.

I wrote a little bit about why that's the case here:

 

https://chriscooperwcu.substack.com/p/the-election-season-is-officially

Last Week in Redistricting

by Christopher Cooper

Last week was a doozy of a week in redistricting news. I posted a quick rundown of the highlights here: 

https://open.substack.com/pub/chriscooperwcu/p/last-week-in-redistricting

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Looking Back at the Nov. 2025 Elections (& A Few Other Things)

By Christopher Cooper

On November 4, I wrote a short piece looking forward to election day, 2025 in North Carolina. In days since the election, I’ve participated in a few forums about what happened (see, for example, this one hosted by Political Scientist and all around good guy Michael Bitzer), which have given me the opportunity to think a little more systematically about what happened and what it might mean. 

I posted five takeaways that I feel relatively confident in at this early stage at the Anatomy of a Purple State Substack: 

https://open.substack.com/pub/chriscooperwcu/p/looking-back-at-the-nov-2025-elections