What does it take to win NC? Throughout the state are swaths of deeply red rural counties; blue cities and urban, dense suburbs; and some areas that may be hard to predict heading into the Nov. 8 election. We disect six counties that symbolize this diversity, and bring you the facts on how elections work in our state.
Over 7.4 million North Carolinians are registered to vote for the 2022 general election.
The largest group of registered voters statewide is unaffiliated voters, followed by Democrats and then Republicans.
But the political makeup of the state is completely different from one county to another, and even within counties.
For this project, we chose to spotlight Randolph and Robeson counties because they lean Republican. In the past two presidential elections, both counties preferred the Republican nominee. In U.S. Senate races, voters in Robeson preferred the Democratic nominee in 2014 (Kay Hagan) but opted for the Republican nominees in 2016 (Richard Burr) and 2020 (Thom Tillis).
We chose Durham and Mecklenburg counties because they lean Democratic. Voters there have opted for the Democratic nominee in the past two presidential elections and the past three U.S. Senate races in the state.
Nash and Scotland represent the purple counties, where voters often switch party choice across different races and years.
Voters statewide
Here’s a breakdown of statewide numbers:
33.72% of registered voters are Democrats, 30.01% are Republicans and 35.59% are unaffiliated
Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi is a politics reporter for the News & Observer. She reports on health care, including mental health and Medicaid expansion, hurricane recovery efforts and lobbying. Luciana previously worked as a Roy W. Howard Fellow at Searchlight New Mexico, an investigative news organization.
