Summary:
- Democrats once again demonstrated a formidable statewide recruiting operation
- Republicans failed to find candidates in 32 legislative districts around the state
- Many more Republicans will face primary challenges than Democrats
Last Friday, candidate filing closed for the 2026 general election in North Carolina. Candidates from all recognized political parties in the state filed for state and federal races taking part in 2026, prominently including the 170 legislative races for the North Carolina General Assembly.
Candidate filing is an important milestone in the election cycle for many reasons, but particularly because it gives us our first glimpse into what the 2027-2028 General Assembly term will look like. Here are the main takeaways.
Candidate recruiting: a major contrast
Recruiting candidates to run in all 170 legislative districts (120 in the State House, 50 in the State Senate) is no small task. It requires a massive, statewide effort by any political party to identify, cultivate and often persuade allies to run for office. Due to pervasive partisan gerrymandering, around 85% of North Carolina’s legislative districts are effectively non-competitive, meaning they are drawn to be completely safe for one party or the other. In those cases, persuading candidates in the disfavored party to run at all is a tall order.
Nevertheless, just as they did in the 2024 election cycle, the Democrats’ recruiting operation showed remarkable success. The Democrats will contest 168 of the 170 districts in the state legislature. In fact, the party itself claims it recruited candidates for all 170, since 2 candidates are technically running as independents who intend to caucus with the Democrats. (Note: while this claim is perfectly sound, the maps below nevertheless reflect only candidates’ official party registration.)
On the Republican side, however, 2024’s recruiting failure seems to have persisted. The Republicans failed to field candidates in 32 districts: 28 in the State House, 5 in the State Senate. This is only a slight improvement over 2024, when they failed to field candidates in 35 districts.
Once again, just as in 2024, Republicans will thus surrender most of Mecklenburg and Durham counties, Raleigh, Asheville, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Fayetteville before a single vote is counted. Notably, the Republicans were also not able to find a challenger against the Democratic Minority Leader himself, Rep. Robert Reives (House District 54 – Chatham and Randolph). While HD-54 leans Democratic (a D+5 district), it is by no means a slam-dunk district.
The Republican collapse in Mecklenburg county in particular is striking. Not only will Republicans only field candidates in 5 of the county’s 13 House districts, and 3 of its 5 Senate districts (not including Senate District 37) – but the party will also fail to contest a single one of the 5 Superior Court judicial races on the Mecklenburg ballot.
Expanded primaries
Members of both parties will face a significant number of primaries, but Republican members will see many more, even after accounting for their larger numbers. Among Republican incumbent lawmakers who are running for re-election, 29% will face primary challenges, compared to 15% of Democratic incumbents.
Republican members are seeing increasing challenges from the far-right, MAGA-aligned faction, which demands both more far-reaching regulation on social issues as well as Donald Trump-inspired stylistic flourish. This is, in part, the result of nearly 15 years under one of the nation’s most aggressive partisan gerrymandering regimes. Gerrymandering has turned a large number of legislative elections into essentially primary contests, where only the most extreme and ideological voters choose the candidates.
