Roy Cooper led Michael Whatley by 14 points in the 2026 midterm elections race for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat, according to a new WRAL/WSOC Poll released Tuesday. The poll showed Cooper at 54% and Whatley at 40% among likely voters, with early voting starting this week and Election Day set for Nov. 3.
WRAL/WSOC Poll results
The SurveyUSA poll for WRAL and WSOC-TV in Charlotte was conducted Oct. 7-11 and surveyed 900 North Carolinians. Of those, 643 had either already voted by mail or said they were likely to vote. The poll carried a credibility interval of 5 percentage points, and about 5% of respondents were undecided while 1% said they would vote for another candidate.
Michael Dublin is running as the Green Party nominee and Shannon Bray is running as the Libertarian nominee. Thom Tillis is not seeking reelection, leaving the seat open in a race that has drawn heavy attention as Election Day approaches.
Whatley campaign response
Whatley’s spokesman, DJ Griffin, said in a written statement to WRAL that “Michael Whatley has been meeting with communities across the state holding nearly 400 campaign events, meeting with communities from Murphy to Manteo as Roy Cooper hides in his basement.” Griffin also said, “We are confident this race will continue to tighten, and Michael Whatley will win in November.”
Jeff Allen, Cooper’s campaign manager, responded that “A Democrat has not won statewide federal office here in nearly two decades, and North Carolina is a 50-50 state.” He added, “We’re building a campaign to earn every vote and make sure North Carolinians know that Roy Cooper will fight for them, while Michael Whatley will continue to enrich himself at their expense.”
North Carolina polling trend
Michael Bitzer, a Catawba College political scientist, said his Sept. 30 poll showed Cooper with a 12-point lead. About two weeks later, the new SurveyUSA poll widened that margin to 14 points, and Bitzer said, “The common expectation that a lot of us had was this lead by Cooper would shrink, and we would go into a kind of normal dynamic of North Carolina elections — where basically the margin of victory would be within a poll's margin of error.”
He added, “I'm not sure that we're seeing that at this point.” Whatley has Donald Trump’s endorsement, but the new numbers leave him still trailing as early voting opens and the campaign enters its final stretch before Nov. 3.
