Plurality of North Carolina voters want Democrats in the legislature, polls report
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Three polls show 41% to 48.5% of North Carolinians favoring Democrats in legislature.
- But odds are still unlikely that Democrats take majority in General Assembly.
- Polls come amid low approval ratings for President Donald Trump.
Three recent polls show North Carolinians favoring Democrats for state legislative races ahead of the November midterms.
The polls, which come from Elon University, Catawba College and a nonprofit, found 41% to 48.5% of respondents preferring Democrats in the General Assembly.
“If it was one poll, you’d call it an outlier, if it’s three polls, you call it a pattern,” Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University, said.
Republicans have dominated the North Carolina legislature since 2010 and currently hold a veto-proof supermajority in the state Senate. In the House, they’re just one vote short of a supermajority and have, at times, convinced Democrats to vote with them to override Gov. Josh Stein’s vetoes.
But even if the poll numbers were to hold up in the election, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the legislature would flip to Democratic control for the first time in over a decade.
Cooper said that while the numbers could mean Democrats break the Senate supermajority, it’s still “highly unlikely” that they wrest control of either chamber from Republicans.
“It would take running Mark Robinson in every one of the 170 districts,” Cooper said, referring to the scandal-plagued Republican gubernatorial candidate who lost to Gov. Josh Stein by 15 points in the 2024 election.
“I mean that really is what it takes. The Senate map in particular is really hard to move,” he said.
North Carolina’s legislative districts are drawn and approved by Republican leaders in the General Assembly, who have openly crafted maps for their own benefit.
What do the polls say?
The most recent poll, released by Elon University on Thursday morning, found that 41% of respondents wanted Democrats to control the state legislature after the 2026 elections. 37% of respondents said they preferred Republican control.
Catawba College’s poll found similar results, with 43% of respondents preferring Democrats and 36% favoring Republicans for legislative races and the state Supreme Court election.
The poll with the highest Democratic preference came from a collaboration between a Republican and Democratic strategist.
Paul Shumaker, a longtime Republican campaign adviser, and Morgan Jackson, who has worked for Stein and Gov. Roy Cooper, helped conduct a poll of 800 North Carolina voters for a nonprofit called Healthier United.
In that poll, 48.5% of respondents said they were more likely to vote for a Democratic candidate for the state legislature. 37.8% said they’d vote for a Republican.
Polls come amid low approval ratings for Trump
The polls come as President Donald Trump faces low approval ratings amid a war with Iran, climbing gas prices and scrutiny over ICE.
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who announced his retirement last year, has frequently criticized the Trump administration in recent months and has warned that their actions could cost Republicans votes in the midterms.
“The state House majority is personal to me,” Tillis, who helped flip the state legislature to Republican control in 2010, told The News & Observer. “The last thing that I want to have happen in the waning days of my political career is having this thing that I played a role in achieving slip out of our fingers.”
