In the closing weeks of the 2026 general election, signs point to a “blue wave” cycle similar to 2018. Roy Cooper leads Michael Whatley for U.S. Senate by double digits in many polls. The national generic ballot average leans Democratic by 6 points, and the August Carolina Forward Poll found a similar result on the state legislative ballot. Voters are restless and ready for change.
So how will a 2026 “blue wave” affect the North Carolina General Assembly? While it’s hard to predict the outcomes of specific races, it’s a strong bet that the Democrats will have a good night in November. And like in 2018, the 2026 cycle is likely to have a lasting effect on the balance of power in the state legislature - one that partisan gerrymandering is becoming less effective at stopping.
A “blue-ing” map
Wave elections are sometimes considered one-off events, like a blip that quickly reverts once the moment passes. But the 2018 election defied that prediction. Instead, the 2018 blue wave had lasting effects on North Carolina voter behavior and permanently changed the seat math of the state legislature.
In the 2018 election, Democrats flipped 12 House seats (while losing 2, for a net gain of 10) and 6 Senate seats (no losses). Most of the seats Democrats won in that cycle remain Democratic today. Of the 12 House seats Democrats flipped, 9 remain in their column to this day; of the 6 Senate seats, they still hold 5.
Nationally, 2018 was a particularly perilous year for Republicans in suburban districts, and North Carolina was no exception. Among the seats Democrats flipped in competitive races in 2018, most are considered safe seats today, to the extent that many of them are no longer even contested by a Republican challenger. This is only partly attributable to the multiple rounds of (Republican-led) redistricting since then. The primary reason is the steady political realignment among suburban voters themselves, among whom the GOP-Trump brand is increasingly toxic.
Across suburban North Carolina, the GOP now holds on to the seats it has only in bizarrely-drawn districts carved for maximum Republican partisan advantage. And every one these are front-line contests this fall.
The gerrymander is becoming less effective
In 2011, North Carolina Republicans drew new election maps that manufactured an impervious supermajority for themselves overnight. But by 2022, with yet another fresh gerrymander and in the first midterm of a new opposite-party President, the GOP could only get to the Senate supermajority exactly (30 of 50 seats). In the House, they still fell one seat short.
Of course, in 2023, Tricia Cotham’s dirty tricks handed Republicans the House supermajority they couldn’t win otherwise. And even that did not last: Republicans lost the House supermajority again in 2024. Though Republicans have relied on a small handful of rogue Democrats (and now-former Democrats) to override many of Governor Stein’s vetoes, even this strategy won’t be effective in the 2027-2028 legislature, since all of those wayward members were soundly defeated in primaries.
In the North Carolina Senate, the maps are easier to gerrymander than in the House due to the Stephenson process, which is why Republicans hold a supermajority there today. Yet at 30 seats, a single Democratic flip will break that supermajority, and Democrats face several better opportunities to flip seats than Republicans do.
All in all, the Republican partisan gerrymander of the General Assembly has demonstrably weakened over time. The long-running political realignment of North Carolina is steadily eroding the gerrymander in unmistakable ways. Wave elections, like those in 2018 and today in 2026, tend to be catalysts that accelerate the trend.
Trading voters
Below the seat count math is a political geography story of North Carolina that’s been building for decades. There are two countervailing forces that have largely offset each other for decades in North Carolina’s politics - but which the Trump era has tilted off-balance.
The first of these was the change in the state’s metros and suburbs, which have both swung decisively Democratic while many rural areas grew more reliably Republican. In between, exurban areas - what Duke professor Mac McCorkle famously titled “countrypolitan” - became more competitive. Today, Democrats are learning how to compete in these places, from Graham to Concord, and Winterville to Bryson City, and are likely to find some successes there this fall.
By contrast, Republicans have all but gone extinct in the state’s largest and fastest-growing metro counties. Not only do Democrats now completely dominate the local politics and legislative delegations of both Mecklenburg and Wake counties (home to roughly a quarter of the entire state electorate) - but Republicans have mostly stopped trying. In the 2026 election, Republicans failed to field candidates in a whopping 33 legislative districts (28 in the House, 5 in the Senate), essentially surrendering a swath of metro areas without a single ballot.
The Democrats face real challenges in expanding both their district territories and their voter “tent” - but they are doing so, and are likely to find some success this November. Whether the Republicans can bridge the gap between their Trump-adoring rural base and suburban voters is an open question, however. At a bare minimum, doing so requires fielding candidates on a ballot, which they will not in 33 districts in 2026.
This is the kind of structural imbalance that shows up first in a wave year.
What this means for 2027-2028
Democrats are likely to add legislative seats this November, and most of the seats they win, they’re also likely to keep. That has consequences well past this year’s election. In future rounds of redistricting, a safe Republican legislative supermajority is nearly impossible to engineer for a party that has already given up most of the state’s population centers.
Gerrymandering can still manufacture a simple majority, but it requires more creativity than in 2011. However one feels about it, change is coming to North Carolina - and 2026 will likely be remembered as a turning point.
