2024 United States presidential election in North Carolina

The 2024 United States presidential election in North Carolina took place on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, as part of the 2024 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. North Carolina voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote. The state of North Carolina has 16 electoral votes in the Electoral College, following reapportionment due to the 2020 United States census in which the state gained a seat. While Republican presidential candidates won close victories in 2012, 2016, and 2020, even as polls indicated a narrow win by Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, at the state level, Democrat Roy Cooper won the 2016 and 2020 gubernatorial elections. Because of these results, the presidential election was expected to be competitive. Today a purple to slightly red state, North Carolina was targeted by both parties in 2024, with major news organizations marking the state as a tossup or slightly leaning towards the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, who carried the state with a margin similar to his 2016 result. Incumbent president Biden was initially poised to run for re-election but withdrew on July 21 and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. Despite North Carolina Republicans struggling down-ballot, especially due to controversial Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, Trump won the state by 3 %, keeping it in the Republican column for the fourth election cycle in a row. Trump won the state himself for the third straight election. North Carolina remains the only battleground state that Trump won all three times. With 50 percent of the vote, Trump won the highest percentage of the vote for any presidential candidate since 2004. Harris did outperform Hillary Clinton in 2016, losing by a 3 % margin compared to Clinton's 3 % margin of defeat. However, 2024 had less of a 3rd party vote compared to 2016. North Carolina and Georgia were the only two battleground states where Harris did better than Clinton but worse than Biden. They were some of the few states in the country to have many counties shift significantly leftward, particularly counties in the Piedmont Atlantic megaregion. North Carolina is the only state that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 that did not vote for him by double digits in 2024. This presidential election marks the first time since 2012 that the winning candidate won the election with an absolute majority of the vote.