The U.S. Senate race between Republican Thom Tillis and incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan ended with a close margin, with Tillis securing 48.9 percent of voters to Hagan’s 47.2 percent. Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate and expanded their majority in the House of Representatives.
Rob Schofield, policy director for N.C. Policy Watch, said the Democrats’ losses were historically unsurprising.
“There’s no example in recent history which we can find in which a president’s party does well in a midterm. That history was set up against Hagan from the start,” he said.
The campaigns aimed to increase North Carolina’s voter turnout to levels rivaling those of a presidential election season.
Still, the U.S. Elections Project said only 36 percent of voters turned out nationwide, compared to approximately 41 percent in the 2010 general election — the lowest voter turnout since 1942.
A growing trend of exorbitant campaign budgets and donations is changing the political climate, Schofield said.
“It’s going to be a challenge more and more to find high quality candidates in this new world, in which one has to have so much money lined up in order to be a viable candidate,” he said.
Schofield said the “monster voting laws” rolled out in 2013, including the elimination of same-day registration and shortened early voting periods, might have been a factor.