Much has been said, written, posted, memed, and shouted into the ether about the election results.
I’ve heard it called Blue Wave 2.0. The recently rebranded Washington Sun, formerly NOTUS, called it a “Bluenami.” The Assembly dubbed it the “Republicans’ Red Wedding” (if you missed the Game of Thrones reference, just know it’s a wedding, and it goes very badly). Though polling, pundits, and prediction markets all pointed to Democrats making significant gains this year, plenty of people — myself included — were genuinely shocked at how many races they won and by how much, from coast to coast, up and down the ballot, even in places you wouldn’t expect.
Here in New Hanover County, Democrats flipped State Senate District 7, House District 20, the Board of Commissioners, and the school board. Democrat Dr. Kimberly Hardy is within one percentage point of longtime incumbent Republican David Rouzer in North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District, which was gerrymandered to be a reliably safe GOP win (Rouzer has declared victory; Hardy is holding out hope she can pick up the extra votes before the canvass).
Notably, many of these wins were not close. In the county commissioner race, Democratic newcomer Dr. LeShonda Wallace beat incumbent Republican LeAnn Pierce by 4.5 points, nearly 9,000 votes. In the school board race, the top vote-getter was Democrat Jerry Jones, Jr., who narrowly lost in 2024. He received over 13,000 more votes than incumbent Republican Josie Barnhart, who won on a four-candidate slate in 2022 and came in dead last this year.
All of this despite fairly lopsided fundraising, with the majority of the $6 million spent on local races supporting Republican candidates. It wasn’t enough — perhaps no amount would have been enough.
I spent much of this past week talking through the results with my colleague Ken Campbell on Wednesday’sMorning Edition, WECT’s Jon Evans, NC Local, WUNC’s Due South, and Marlon Weem’s The Journeyman podcast. My biggest takeaway? The election results are overdetermined, and we should be careful not to paint with a broad brush, both in thinking about voters and races. This election was about simple gut reactions — but also about complicated and sometimes contradictory motives.
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
The big picture narrative is that voters punished Trump — who, after all, repeatedly asked them to pretend he was on the ballot — because the economy wasn’t working for them, and Trump had made it worse by starting a war with Iran (and then fecklessly brushing off their concerns). Democrats knew they would struggle to get a word in edgewise with Trump occupying much of the media’s bandwidth; reportedly, this was actually quantified by a media consultant, who told House Democratic leadership in the spring of 2025 that the average American spends about 4 minutes thinking about politics, with Trump taking up all but 30 seconds of that, according to The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer.
So, Democrats went with a short, simple message they could play on repeat: the economy sucks, and it’s Trump’s fault.
As strategies go, you could do worse than cribbing from James Carville’s famous words from the 1992 Clinton campaign. And, unlike past iterations of the “Orange Man Bad” approach, which focused on Trump’s anti-democratic and authoritarian impulses, this resonated more deeply, because concerns over the somewhat abstract concept of “democracy” don’t cause the same visceral agony as surging prices at the grocery store and gas station. In 2024, Dems ran on the sacred and lost; this year, they ran on the profane, and won.
This framing prompts the question, as The Atlantic put it, “Did Democrats Win — Or Did Trump Lose?”
The latter, though cold comfort, is probably preferable to Republicans, because it limits credence to the Democratic policy platforms they dislike.
Midterm elections are always tough for the party in power, and the pendulum always swings back. The GOP can imagine a post-Trump future where those voters will come back to their senses — and back to the conservative fold. Of course, that future will require figuring out what a post-Trump Republican Party looks like, but we’ll leave that for another column.
This narrative is, for obvious reasons, annoying for Democrats who — though they welcomed the Blue Wave — would like to think that their hard work and thoughtful policies carried the day, and moreover that something has fundamentally shifted.
But is the narrative true?
The answer is: some of the time, for some of the voters.
Trump and turnout
In one way, this is a story about turnout. Once a Democrat or Republican actually got to the polls, there seemed to be little hand-wringing about how to vote. North Carolina may have done away with the straight-ticket option in 2013, but lots of people flew through their ballots, checking either all Ds or all Rs. The question for them wasn’t whom they’d vote for, but why they came out.
In some states, high-profile matchups or notably progressive Democratic candidates drove turnout, but I’m not sure that’s the case in North Carolina. Former Governor Roy Cooper, a relatively moderate Democrat, didn’t really struggle against Republican Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chair. Some Democratic voters did tell me that they felt a general sense of empowerment based on what was going on in other states — Georgia, Texas, and Michigan all got namechecked — but many were focused more practically on meat and potatoes issues in their home state.
Interestingly, many noted the deluge of campaign ads, especially on social media, but not exactly in a way I think candidates would hope. A lot of voters told me they had come out to vote against a candidate based on their attack ads, or for a candidate after seeing an ad for their opponent. New candidates struggle mightily to earn name recognition, and I think, at least in some races, attack ads paradoxically helped the candidates being attacked by getting their name out there. As I've said elsewhere this week, I think that was the effect of Republican Michael Lee's AI-generated ads mocking Democratic challenger Jessica Bichler in Senate District 7. Meanwhile, a lot of voters told me they'd met local candidates at events or even on their front doorstep. Those experiences, at least anecdotally, seemed to have had a much greater effect than, say, mailers and doorhangers, which predominantly go right in the trash.
Talking to folks at the polls, it was clear that some Democratic voters who might have sat out the midterm elections came off the bench to “send a message to Trump,” as several told me directly. For some, this was shorthand for electing people to Congress who will act as a bulwark against the unitary executive theory run amok. For others, it’s about repudiating the party of Trump, rejecting the attempts of moderate Republicans to distance themselves from the President and his rhetoric.
“Is LeAnn Pierce a Trumper? Of course not,” a Democratic voter told me at the polls during early voting, adding that he’d supported the Republican commissioner in 2022. “But tough shit. She can leave the party anytime she wants.”
I offered that running as an unaffiliated or with a third party was tough, pointing to Rebecca Trammel’s unsuccessful petition to run for State Senate District 7, or the dim prospect of the three Libertarian candidates in our area. He shrugged, admitted he wasn’t a fan of the two-party system, and said, “But that’s the system we have.”
Other Dems very much came out on the issues, from environmental protection to school funding. Some told me the Blue Wave talk was kind of obscuring the real local issues. But some also admitted it had nudged them on.
“I voted at the library, and when I pulled in and saw the line around the building, I almost kept driving. But then I was like, I’ve been so f– … I’ve been so mad for the last two years, I can spend 15 minutes in line,” a Dem voter told me, joking that she would have waited in line twice if she could.
(I do have to note, while turnout was up from 2022, there were plenty who stayed home, given that only around 54% of voters turned out, both at the state and New Hanover County level.)
Meanwhile, the Republican turnout during early voting was depressed — and not enough showed up on Election Day to catch up. I heard from a few who sat things out not so much out of protest but because they weren’t really inspired by Whatley’s Senate run, David Rouzer’s Congressional reelection bid, or other top-of-the-ballot races.
“What am I gonna do, register as a Democrat? Yeah, no thanks. It’s not a ‘one or the other thing,’ you can’t be bullied into a different party,” one of my neighbors, a young Republican man, told me.
Some saw the Blue Wave as a foregone conclusion and said they’d “worry about things in 2028.”
Purple pixels
Much of the election, as is often the case in this very purple part of a purple state, came down to unaffiliated voters — a plurality of the electorate that is more of a Venn diagram than a unique profile. Some places look purple from 30,000 feet, but if you zoom in, you see a mix of red and blue dots. North Carolina, it seems, has actual purple pixels — voters who, based on the data, cast their vote for Trump for president and Democrats Cooper and then Josh Stein for Governor. Our state split that decision three times, in 2016, 2020, and 2024, making us something of a political anomaly, fascinating researchers and frustrating pundits.
There are, of course, UNAs who reliably vote left or right, but also disaffected leftists and recovering Tea Party members and lots of eclectic folks in between (myself included). UNAs decide elections, and so both parties court their vote, even if they don’t fully understand who “they” are.
Some UNAs, who might otherwise vote a split ballot, told me they “just couldn’t” vote for a Republican this time around.
This was true even for relatively apolitical races, like District Court Judge or Soil and Water Conservation District. Case in point: I’ve heard from more than a few people who were dismayed that G. Frank Jones, well-regarded by his peers, lost his reelection bid.
“The Blue Wave takes no prisoners,” an attorney and lifelong Democrat told me this week, lamenting Jones’ loss.
I heard similar things about Republican Chris Sutton, a longtime advocate who ran for New Hanover County school board.
At the same time, there were also plenty of unaffiliated who had specific reasons to vote for local and state races, who were frustrated with the General Assembly’s lackluster support for public schools or pro-corporate approach to regulation and environmental protection. There were voters who pointed to specific school board and board of commissioners decisions and policies as their motive. They seemed more willing to vote based on track record than party alone, but Trump still loomed large.
“It’s hard to ignore,” a retired UNA woman told me. “When he’s gone, I could consider it. I’ve voted for both parties, for president, for local stuff, city council. But it’s hard because he’s so hateful.”
And, of course, individual voters can have a mix of motives – sometimes in confluence, sometimes in conflict. I talked to right-leaning unaffiliated voters who said they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for many Democratic candidates, but struggled to support Republican incumbents. Some of them still split ballots, the data indicates. Anecdotally, several centrist UNAs told me they voted for incumbents Pierce and Democrat Rob Zapple, with one saying experience was more important than “promises.”
Unaffiliated voters are, in my experience, less tribal — but really all voters are complicated. What we say about any demographic is true of the individual: the mind is rarely a monolith. People sometimes vote their principles, or a straight ticket out of habit, but they can also be mercurial, irrational, selfish, or simplistic; they vote against their own interests, they vote for very superficial or deeply personal reasons, and their policy preferences don’t always align with their party.
Constitutional contradictions
On that last point, perhaps nowhere is the tension between policy and party more obvious than the overwhelming success of the three amendments to the North Carolina Constitution that appeared on the ballot: one enshrining photo ID requirements for voting, one capping the state’s income tax, and one setting an as-yet-unspecified cap on local property taxes (the lame-duck GOP majority is expected to hammer out the legislative details this month).
I’ve had more questions about the amendments, most of all the property tax cap, than anything else on this year’s ballot.
You could argue that since photo ID is already a legal requirement, and the income tax is already slated to drop below the amendment’s cap, folks have found them less objectionable, though critics would still say they’re 'zombie legislation,' designed to unnaturally outlive the GOP majority. You could also argue that enough Democrats and left-leaning UNAs have ‘come around’ to photo ID or at least deprioritized it as a major concern – and evidently the requirement does not foreclose Democratic victories.
But the cap on local property taxes not only extends the GOP’s power, it extends Raleigh’s, by usurping locally elected officials’ power to set tax policy. I’ve heard from people who both support and oppose the amendments that this is where the real contradiction lies.
As one reader put it: “How do voters reconcile wanting government to provide or fund more services while simultaneously supporting a constitutional measure which could add restrictions on its ability to collect revenue?”
There are lots of answers, but one is that voters – especially in the private moment of filling out a secret ballot – don’t necessarily require themselves to have coherent politics. Unlike elected officials on the dais, they can be contradictory, self-serving, or just weird, and not have to explain their vote.
So, it is completely possible for a voter to support a slate of Democrats, knowing at least in theory that they are more likely than their Republican counterparts to increase taxes, for purposes that the voter fully supports, but also, when asked directly if they want to pay more taxes, to say “no.”
Another answer, candidly, is civic illiteracy. For a host of reasons, not everyone follows the complicated story of government funding, or understands the tangled processes of who pays for what with which revenue source. Despite good reporting from numerous media outlets, I think a lot of people missed this story and didn’t grasp the stakes.
And, of course, framing matters. A colleague put it this way, “it’s like the difference between asking, ‘if called upon, would you fight to defend the nation?’ and asking ‘do you want to die?’ That's hyperbolic, but you get the idea.
There’s no nuance in a yes-or-no question – but the same could be said of many election claims. “I’ll protect drinking water!” How? “I’ll keep taxes low.” Will any services need to be cut? Crucially, election rhetoric doesn’t usually allow “tying money to value,” as Jon Stewart often says on The Weekly Show. Cutting taxes in the abstract sounds great. But when your kid’s school is overcrowded or falling apart, then you’re upset.
Theory isn’t the same as practice, and vice versa, and politically, that cuts both ways. I know conservatives who were mad when Republican county commissioners made cuts to pre-K and school nurses, and liberals infuriated by the all-Democratic Wilmington City Council’s tax hike.
So, how did the amendments, enshrining Republican policy, pass by the same margin that Cooper trounced Whatley in the U.S. Senate race? Because people are all about complications and elections are all about oversimplifications.
That’s the story – and it’s also the lesson, for Democrats, I think.
Majorities and mandates
Leaving aside the national scene, although some of this would apply there, too, I’m thinking about Raleigh, and the new Democratic majority in the House, and near-even split in the Senate (I think the GOP will hold on by one seat).
As I wrote elsewhere this week, for a long time North Carolina Republicans have held a majority, at least in significant part, through gerrymandering. That’s just politics, many on the right say, pointing to the years of Democrats’ own gerrymandering that preceded 2010. But setting aside that revanchist, and frankly anti-democratic attitude, look at what happened: a Republican supermajority (and 11 out of 14 Congressional seats) in a state that split fairly evenly on presidential elections. The GOP often governed as if their policies were simply the will of the people – but obviously that wasn’t the case.
Point being, a majority is not the same as a mandate.
And if that goes for Republicans over the last decade, it goes for Democrats now. The state may have slid a little to the left, but it’s still essentially the same messy purple mix of people, each with their own contradictions.
I think a lot of Democrats recognize that, and both locally and around the country, I’m hearing two things: ‘yes’ to bipartisanship and ‘no’ to the culture wars.
Take Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, the first Latina to hold the office and the first Democrat to win since 1990, who said bluntly to Republicans and her own party in September, “shove it with your culture wars.” She’s maintained the tone since this week’s results, saying she’d build a bipartisan administration focusing on the economy and schools.
Here in New Hanover County, Democrat Deb Butler, longtime incumbent in House District 18 and co-founder of the Progressive House Caucus, told me something similar.
"We're focused on deliverables. We don't want to fight culture wars. I've had conversations with leadership and the governor — we're not interested in fighting and rehashing these culture wars," she said. "We're interested in fixing some metaphorical potholes for people,” an allusion to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s ‘pothole politics,’ an attempt to shift the focus from his leftist, Democratic Socialist politics to basic government functions.
Democrat Jessica Bichler, the political newcomer who defeated Senate Majority Leader Michael Lee, also said she wanted “to break some of the animosity across party lines, and focus on the good of our community.”
Overall, the closer to home you get, the easier that probably is.
In Washington, some on the left are baying for political blood: investigations and impeachments, revenge for eight years of Trump and Trumpism. And certainly that’s why some, though not nearly all, voters sent their Democratic representatives to D.C. Other voters simply want a return to normalcy after the decadence of the Trump administration and the slavish enablers of the Republican Congress. Some might even hope Congress will do something – fix healthcare, address affordability and income inequality, regulate stock trading by government officials (on both sides of the aisle), reform immigration, end the war in Iran, release the rest of the Epstein files, and so on.
In Raleigh, with the General Assembly likely to be split, the pendulum swing may be more peaceful. Governor Stein called for bipartisan compromise in the upcoming legislative years on issues like economic relief, the badly stalled Helene recovery, and workforce development. There will also be a significant adjustment period, with Republicans losing significant expertise and leadership and Democrats shepherding a large cohort of freshman representatives. Neither side may be in shape for a full-court press.
And here in New Hanover County?
I expect to see the school board – with four new Democratic members – unwind some of the contentious culture war decisions made under the Republican majority. Jones, who likely has the votes to be the new chair, told my colleague Rachel Keith that he plans to un-ban Stamped and roll back aban on flags and displays. That will obviously rankle some conservatives, but with six Democrats and one Libertarian on the board, it won’t be difficult to do. Will the pendulum keep swinging after that reset? Maybe not. Jones and some of his fellow Democrats have said they want to focus on student achievement, Title IX work, and literacy. And, of course, they’ll likely be advocating for the bluer General Assembly to improve funding.
As for the Board of Commissioners, I think we’ll see the newly Democratic majority revisit some recent cuts to staff, nonprofit funding, and support for affordable housing. I also think we’ll likely see a thaw in the chilly relationship between the county and the City of Wilmington, and the reestablishment of some city-county committees on housing and community affairs. I suspect a conversation about the Northside Co-op will be on the table, and changes in how commissioners appoint their five seats to The Endowment. I don’t think all that will be frictionless; don’t get me wrong, there were some strong feelings during the recent budget votes – and probably some hard feelings afterward. But I don’t think it’ll be a socialist revolution, either.
We’ve got about a year to see what happens before the next round of candidate filings and the run-up to the 2028 primary. What Democrats do with their majorities will play a large part in whether they keep them, and whether they can earn a mandate based on more than frustration with the opposition. Doing that will mean understanding the weird and wonderful people who make up our community, and what they really want their government to do.
But for now, maybe for a few weeks after the canvass (when vote tallies are certified), we’ll take a break from the exciting and exhausting world of politics.
