In North Carolina, where independent voters matter, Trump’s excesses are hurting his own

An increasing number of polls show the popular former Democratic governor Roy Cooper with a clear lead over the Republican Michael Whatley in the race to decide North Carolina’s new senator. In one such poll, his lead is even reported to be as high as 15 percentage points, which is all the more significant because it comes from a polling organisation with close ties to the Republicans. All this in a state that has not elected a Democratic senator for eighteen years, and which Trump won on all three occasions he stood as a candidate.

Cooper is a candidate with a track record well suited to winning. He worked on the family farm as a boy, attended university in the state, and was elected four times as Attorney General and twice as Governor. During the election campaign, he often recalls one of his achievements as Governor: having succeeded, despite Republican control of the state legislature, in expanding healthcare coverage across the state. Today, he maintains an approval rating of 51.5 per cent among the citizens of North Carolina. Running against him is a man who spent fifteen years as a lobbyist, is making his first bid for public office, and gained his greatest national exposure as chairman of the Republican National Committee between 2024 and 2025 – a third of voters do not know him well enough to form an opinion of him. Former Republican Governor Pat McCrory, who was defeated by Cooper in 2016, stated that “it is one thing to be the party’s man, quite another to be the man on the ballot”, whilst Florida’s Republican Senator Rick Scott described the contest as “one of the toughest states on the electoral map”, precisely because it involves challenging a former governor who is already well-known among voters.

Donald Trump, however, does not believe the battle is lost: he has in fact decided to appear alongside Whatley at a rally in the state, in an attempt to boost the candidate’s popularity. During the evening, he repeatedly urged voters to vote ‘as if I were on the ballot paper’. He then claimed that Cooper is part of the radical left – even though this is not actually the case – and that he is simply pretending to be a moderate. It is not certain, however, that the President’s presence is a good idea: in North Carolina, the number of registered voters for the two parties is more or less equal, whilst there are 3.5 million independents. Trump’s approval rating—having thrown his weight behind his candidate—barely reaches 38 per cent, and the state’s voters rank the cost of living and the economy as their top concerns. Paul Shumaker, an adviser to Republican Senator Thom Tillis, told Politico that the president has huge problems with independents, and Whatley must secure a majority of those votes to win.

Money, however, is a potential problem for both of them. It is true that Cooper’s campaign has a significant advantage in fundraising, with $35 million available compared to his opponent’s $16 million, but Whatley could benefit from the Republicans’ substantial spending power at national level, as they have more money than the Democrats and are deciding where to allocate it. To ensure that Washington views spending millions of dollars in North Carolina favourably, Whatley must start to make up ground in the polls and give the impression that there is a realistic path to victory. If this does not happen, national funds are more likely to be channelled to other battleground states, such as Texas, where the Republican candidate Ken Paxton is struggling against the Democrat James Talarico, or Michigan, where the Republicans see a real chance of victory following the victory in the Democratic primary of the radical candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

It is noteworthy that, despite the lead in the polls, the Cooper campaign is not projecting optimism. According to the candidate, the contest will remain too close to call right up to the end, and will be decided by a margin of no more than three percentage points. Pollster David McLennan told the Charlotte Observer that the campaign “does not want voters to stay at home because they feel too confident about the large lead in the polls”. Then there is the history: the last four Senate races were decided by an average margin of 3 percentage points, and at presidential level the Democrats have not won since 2008. These figures are cause for concern for Cooper, even though, as things stand, he is the favourite.