It's (Municipal) Election Day in NC.
Here's What's Happening & Why You Should Care
The Big Picture
The timing of elections in America is kind of a mess. Sure, we have Presidential elections every four years and members of the US House of Representatives every two years. And, U.S. Senators are elected every six years on staggered schedules (~1/3 come up every two years). But, that’s where the regularity ends. Most governors are elected for four year terms that fall on even years, but two states just elect their Governors for two years, and four states elect them in odd numbered years. State legislative term lengths and election dates are even more varied.
And then there’s local elections. Even within a single state there is considerable variation in which offices are elected, when, and for how long. Nowhere is that clearer than in municipal elections in North Carolina where things vary from one county to another--and, sometimes within counties.
In general, terms, odd numbered years like 2025 are reserved for elections for officials who serve a town, city, or village--what we refer to as municipal elections. But, in case you weren’t confused enough, not all municipalities have elections in odd numbered years; some hold them on even numbered years. And, there’s no uniform system for determining which is which.1
How Many Seats Are Up This Year and Who’s Eligible?
In 2025, there are 1,912 seats up for election across 91 counties (every county but Alexander, Currituck, Henderson, Hyde, Jones, Polk, Rutherford, Stanly and Surry counties have at least one election taking place in 2025).2
The vast majority of these are for municipal offices, but a few of them are for various special districts (soil and water commission, etc), or referenda.
To be eligible to vote in municipal elections, you must live in a municipality that’s holding odd-year elections, and be registered to vote there at least 30 days before the election. To live in a municipality, it’s not enough to have an address associated with a municipality--you must live inside the municipal limits. This is an endless source of frustration for voters who may incorrectly think they are eligible to vote because of where their mail arrives. Thoughts and prayers to all of our local elections officials who have to help voters sort this out today.
So, how many people are we talking about? Approximately 52 percent of registered North Carolina voters live in a municipality, the remainder live in unincorporated places. Approximately 39 percent of North Carolina voters live in a municipality that has at least one seat on the ballot in 2025. Bottom line: 39 percent of North Carolina registered voters are eligible to cast a vote in elections this Fall; 61 percent are not.
People who live in municipalities are, on average, younger, more diverse, and less likely to be Republicans, as compared to their counterparts outside of town limits. As a result registered voters who are eligible to vote for a 2025 election also skew younger, more diverse in terms of race, and less Republican. See the table below for specifics.
How Many of These Elections are Competitive
Unfortunately, just because there’s an election doesn’t mean it will be competitive (more candidates than seats). The graph below shows the number of candidates per seats. About 40 percent of all seats up in 2025 have the same number of candidates as seats. Anything to the right of that bar is a “competitive election” (more candidates than seats). Seats to the left of the “0” bar have fewer candidates than seats (hello: write-ins!).
What Will Voter Turnout Look like?
These municipal elections are fundamentally different than even year elections in some important ways. In contrast to even year elections, elections in 2025 are overwhelmingly nonpartisan, meaning that a party label will not appear on the ballot next to a candidates name. County election boards are also not required to make in person early voting available to odd year voters--taking away a frequently used method of voting. In 2025, 13 percent of eligible voters didn’t have an in-person early voting option. And, on top of all of that, this whole off year election business is unbelievably confusing.
Those factors (lack of partisan label, lack of consistency, lack of early voting options for some) combine to produce an electoral petri dish that will breed low very turnout. For example, in 2023, fewer than 13 percent of registered voters who had elections in their municipality cast a ballot. Oof.
The Upside: Your Vote Counts!
So, odd year elections are confusing, expensive (running an election isn’t free), often lead to dominance of special interests, and have abysmally low voter turnout. But, there is a bright side: if you want your vote to make a difference, there’s no better election in which to cast a vote than 2025. In fact, the margins are sometimes so small that after all of the votes are counted, no one is ahead.
And, in that case, North Carolina General Statutes indicate that if the municipality has more than 5,000 votes were vast for that ballot item, the board of elections must call another election with just the top two vote getters on the ballot.
If fewer than 5,000 people cast a vote on that item, the winner is determined “by a method of random selection to be determined by the State Board of Elections.” That happens more often than you’d think.
I live in the municipality of Sylva, NC. In 2015 and 2019, elections for our town commission were decided by a coin toss. That means I was represented by two people who won not because they got the most votes, but rather because they called heads or tails at just the right moment. It also means that if an single voter had not showed up to vote, the election outcome would be different (photo from Smoky Mountain News).
Lest you think I’m pulling out an extreme example, I worked with four graduate assistants in our MPA program to comb through election returns and identify every local election where the difference between winning and losing was fewer than five votes. For example, in an election with a single winner, we included it if the difference between the winning and the first losing candidate was fewer than five votes. If it was a city council election with three open seats, we included it if the difference between the third and fourth top vote-getter (or, votetainer) was fewer than five votes. The graph below shows what we found.
In 2019, 88 North Carolina elections were decided by 5 or fewer votes; it was 67 in 2021 and 57 in 2023. Five people (the equivalent of the occupants of Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine—assuming Scooby is eligible to vote) showing up (or not showing up) would be the difference between one candidate winning or losing.
In 2023, 6 NC elections were tied and were ultimately decided by a coin toss. In 2021 there were ten tied elections and there were thirteen in 2019. A single person showing up for not showing up changed the result of the election.
There will be coin toss elections in 2025. The only question is “how many?”
Don’t sleep on the 2025 elections.
If you’re eligible to vote in one of these elections, there’s no time where your vote (and reminding your friends to vote) will mean more than it does in 2025. If you live outside of a municipality, or your municipal election doesn’t hold 2025 elections, I would argue (indeed, I’m arguing it right now) that the outcome still matters. I may not live in Canton, NC, but I like to go there to mountain bike Berm Park and get a beer at Bearwaters; the mayor and council matter to me and my quality of life. I bet there’s a municipality that matters to you, too.
Looking closely at local elections also raises some normative questions that are worth exploring: What kind of government are we encouraging by conducting this many elections on this many schedules, with this many different rules? Are we expecting too much of our citizens? And, in the absence of robust electoral participation, are certain voices heard more than others?
But, for today, just go vote.
Why is it this way? Jeremy Markovich has you covered in this smart and entertaining NC Rabbit hole piece.
For an excellent take on the Charlotte municipal elections, see this excellent piece by Dr. Michael Bitzer.