HeyJaredAnatomy of A Purple State
Regular updates on North Carolina politics and government from Chris Cooper, a Professor of Political Science and author of Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 12
- Latest publication
- Sep 29, 2026
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- Aug 9, 2026
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Roy Cooper’s Secret Sauce (opens the original)
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Roy Cooper is a bit of a unicorn in modern American politics—a Democrat who has enjoyed broad success and popularity in a state that his party can’t seem to crack in presidential or Senate races.Cooper has been elected to statewide office six times, five of them on the same ballot as a Republican presidential candidate who carried North Carolina. In 2020, he was the only Democratic governor in the country elected in a state Donald Trump won.What makes Cooper special?Find out and read more in thi
Somehow, Hurricane Helene Didn't Depress Voter Turnout (opens the original)
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Today marks two years since Hurricane Helene ravaged western North Carolina. There’s never a good time for a hurricane, but September 27, 2024 might have been the worst—at least from the perspective of election administrators. Mail ballots had already gone out and counties were in the final stages of training poll workers and getting things lined up for in-person early voting to begin.Running an election is hard enough under good circumstances—these election administrators had to do it while the
Mail Voting in North Carolina: What We Know Two Weeks In (opens the original)
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North Carolina began mailing ballots on September 4—the first in the nation to do so. Now that it’s been about two weeks, I thought it would be a good time to report back on who has returned a ballot, and what can we learn from the process thus far.Through September 17, 4,728 ballots have been returned and 4,670 have been accepted. The 58 ballots that have not been accepted are either pending cure (54), or awaiting an affidavit review (4).1 The average
Are U.S. Senate Elections About to Get Interesting Again? (opens the original)
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For the most part, modern U.S. Senate elections are pretty boring and predictable. With rare exceptions, the party that won the state’s Electoral College votes in the previous election wins the ensuing midterm. For example, in 2022 there were 35 Senate elections in the United States; in 34 of them, the winner shared a partisan label with the presidential candidate who had carried that state two years earlier. Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson was the lone exception, an
The 2026 Election Starts Today (opens the original)
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Sometime just after noon today, the 2026 election will kick off when all 100 North Carolina counties send ballots to voters who have requested them.Other states will follow suit, but not today. There is no single national starting date for mail voting. Federal law requires states to send ballots to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before a federal election, but otherwise states largely choose their own adventure. North Carolina goes first. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Delaware h
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