Looking Back at the Nov. 2025 Elections (& A Few Other Things)
On November 4, I wrote a short piece looking forward to election day, 2025 in North Carolina. In days since the election, I’ve participated in a few forums about what happened (see, for example, this one hosted by Political Scientist and all around good guy Michael Bitzer), which have given me the opportunity to think a little more systematically about what happened and what it might mean. Here are five takeaways that I feel relatively confident in at this early stage.1
Odd-year elections are fun! I have some serious qualms about the effects of odd-year elections for representation and representatives (see the conclusion of Anatomy of a Purple State for more), but I’ve got to admit that they are fun to watch. In 2025, there were around 60 elections that were decided by 5 votes or fewer and four that were tied when the unofficial results were tallied. If the results don’t change after canvass, they will be decided by coin toss.
In general, progressive candidates did well in North Carolina. The larger narrative about the 2025 elections is that the results were were good for Democrats and more progressive candidates—both nationally and in North Carolina. And, while I have not systematically coded every candidate’s ideology, I believe that the narrative is largely correct. For example, the progressive group Carolina Forward endorsed 28 candidates in 2025 across the state; 21 of them won. Heck, a young2 gay Democrat who raised money on ActBlue was elected Mayor of Farmville.
But, remember who was eligible to vote in 2025 (and who wasn’t). About 97 percent of all North Carolina elections were for municipal offices—city councils, mayors, and the like. And, municipalities in general are moving farther left, while places outside of city limits (in unincorporated areas) are moving farther right.
What this means in practice is that Democrats, young people, and people who identify as minorities made up a much larger proportion of the eligible 2025 electorate. Given this left-leaning electorate, the surprise would be if Democrats didn’t perform well in 2025.
The 2026 electorate will look very different when every North Carolinian—not just those living in municipalities—are eligible to vote.
Madison County had the most interesting elections in North Carolina. In 2023, The North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill that, among other things, changed elections in Madison County from non-partisan to partisan affairs. In practice, this meant that every candidate for municipal office in Madison County would appear on the ballot with an “R”, a “D”, or another political party abbreviation next to their name. The expectation was that this would benefit the Republican Party, as Madison is a red county. The reality in 2025 gave us no such outcome.
In all, 14 people ran for seats in municipal offices in Madison County. Only one— Robin Smith—was a Republican. Smith received 6 votes. It’s hard for Republicans to win when they don’t run.
The big winner in Madison County on Tuesday was clearly not the Republicans. But the lion’s share of the victories in Madison didn’t go to the Democrats, either. In the end, six of the ten open seats went to candidates who were Unaffiliated.
As I documented in Chapter 8 of Anatomy of a Purple State, Unaffiliated candidates rarely run for office and, when they do run, they rarely win. Madison County in 2025 was a notable exception to this rule. I suspect that this anomaly was due to the change from non-partisan to partisan ballots, but the question. deserves more attention and study before we can conclude that for sure.
Yes, the NJ Governor, the NYC Mayor, and the California ballot item were important, but the Georgia Public Service Commission isn’t Getting Nearly Enough Attention. I know, I know. The Georgia Public Service Commission doesn’t exactly scream relevance, but hear me out. In the entire United States South (not you, Kentucky; I said the South), there are currently 5 Democrats who were elected in statewide non-federal, non-judicial elected offices. All five are in North Carolina. That means in the other 10 former Confederate states, there are zero Democrats in these positions.
After the 2025 elections, that number will double—the Virginia Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General will flip from Republican to Democrat, and the other two additional Democrats are—you guessed it—the Georgia Public Service Commission. These Georgia wins take on even more importance when considering that Georgia has one of the most important US Senate races in the country in 2026.
When combined with Mississippi Democrats breaking the Republican super-majority for the first time since 2019, it appears that the South may be shifting a little closer to having two competitive parties again.3
Some Other Thoughts and Links
Thanks to a recent court ruling, Utah is about to get its first Democratic member of congress since Ben McAdams lost to Republican Burgess Owens in 2020.4 I continue to think once all of this mid-decade redistricting is over (whether court-ordered, like this one, or decided for purely political reasons, like California, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas), we will likely end up with—at most—a 2-3 advantage for one party or the other. The real victim will be competitive seats, which I fear will soon go from endangered to extinct.
There’s been a lot of great analysis of the effects of the government shut-down but my favorite might be this from Mat Glassman: 28 shut-down thoughts.
The new Carolina Journal poll is out and, as usual, there’s a number of interesting nuggets. According to the poll, the Democrats have a small generic ballot advantage on North Carolina General Assembly races, Democrat Roy Cooper (no relation) has a sizable lead over Republican Michael Whatley in the Senate Race, Whatley performs better than Republican Don Brown, the plurality of North Carolinians blame the Democrats for the federal government shut-down, and the majority of respondents believe that tariffs are bad for the national economy. And, that’s just some of the topline data. See the crosstabs for the really fun stuff.
Speaking of polls, Michael Bitzer has another Catawba College/Yougov Poll out. I love that instead of doing *another* horse-race poll, Michael has carved out a niche with smart issue-based polling that tells us a great deal about the state of our democracy. For this one, his headline says it all: “Political identity strong, dialogue weak, violence feared.”
I say early stage because nothing is official yet. Canvass is not complete and we have no data on who showed up on election night.
He’s 41. And before you @ me for saying that’s not young, the standard for youth in this entry is “younger than me.” Therefore, he’s young.
The South, of course, used to be dominated by the Democratic Party; Republicans could barely muster a seat here or there. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the Republican Party picked up gubernatorial, congressional, and state legislative seats in the region, bringing it to real two-party competition for the first time since the before the Civil War in the late 1980s and 1990s. Beginning around 2010, the Republican gains were so large that it was difficult to argue that the South was anything other than a Republican stronghold. Last Tuesday, combined with previous Democratic wins in North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia, suggest that the tide may be swinging slowly back to two-party competition.