North Carolina Democrats flood the field in 2026 General Assembly races | Opinion
Candidate filing for the 2026 midterms has come and gone, and races for the state legislature will be among the most consequential on the ballot. North Carolina Democrats are hoping they can keep Republicans short of a supermajority in the General Assembly, while Republicans are fighting to restore their ability to override the governor’s vetoes without needing Democratic support.
Contesting as many seats as possible has been a goal for Democrats in the past two election cycles, ever since the party left a quarter of all state House and Senate races uncontested in 2022. The lack of recruitment helped Republicans take back the supermajority they had lost in 2018, when Democrats benefitted from a strong performance in the midterms. In the 2024 election, Democrats achieved that goal. They left just one seat uncontested, while 33 districts had no Republican running.
The landscape for 2026 looks similar. Every Senate district and all but two House districts will have a Democratic candidate on the ballot. However, the party has said they’ve found unaffiliated candidates to run in the general election that would caucus with the Democrats if elected, so they’re counting every seat as contested. Meanwhile, a total of 34 districts will not have a Republican candidate on the ballot next year. Five of those districts are in the Senate, and 29 are in the House.
Most of the districts that Republicans left uncontested are in the most urban areas of the state, where GOP candidates have a slim chance of victory anyway. Eight of the uncontested House districts, for example, are in Mecklenburg County. Recruiting candidates for those districts appeared to be a challenge — the Mecklenburg County Republican Party took to social media to ask “strong conservatives” to step up to run in several of the county’s state House districts. By the end of candidate filing, there was still no Republican signed up to run there. Republicans also ceded lots of ground in the Triangle area, including much of Durham and Raleigh.
There may be some strategy involved. Republicans may be happy to forfeit unwinnable districts because it means their efforts can be focused exclusively on closer races that will require more investment to defend. In some of 2024’s toss-up races, Democratic and Republican candidates raised as much as $2 million and $3 million each. Several of those seats were crucial to determining whether Republicans kept a supermajority.
But for Democrats, who have long struggled to maintain a presence in the more “unwinnable” parts of the state, the investment in races they’ll probably lose is worth it. Running candidates in every part of the state helps the party make contact with voters and generate enthusiasm for the Democratic brand. Even slightly improving their margins in those more unwinnable districts could help them in statewide races.
Of course, due to gerrymandering, it will be difficult for Democrats to strip Republicans of their majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly in just one election cycle. The maps are designed to be highly resistant to changes in public opinion, and it would take a significant blue wave election for Democrats to win a majority just in the House, where districts are smaller and a little more difficult to gerrymander. But any progress they can make toward narrowing the margin now will prove beneficial in the long run. Democrats have a long-term goal of flipping both chambers by 2030, so that they can draw new maps with new Census data that’s collected at the start of each decade. Legislative maps are supposed to be drawn just once every 10 years — unless a court orders them to be redrawn sooner — so whoever has the majority then will effectively chart the path for North Carolina’s future.
Running in an unwinnable district might be a loss, but failing to run at all is a forfeit. The only fights you’re guaranteed to lose are the ones you don’t fight at all. Voters deserve choices, even in uncompetitive districts where the outcome is virtually guaranteed. It just makes democracy healthier.
This story was originally published January 6, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "North Carolina Democrats flood the field in 2026 General Assembly races | Opinion."
