2020 Election Results: North Carolina voting counts, electoral college votes

RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina is a key battleground state for both the presidency and control of the Senate in the 2020 election.

In North Carolina, more than 4.5 million people voted early or through via mail-in voting this year. That's just shy of the 4.7 million who voted in the 2016 election, in which Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by approximately 200,000 votes.

Delay of results reporting

The North Carolina State Board of Elections voted Tuesday to keep four polling places open longer because they opened late, which is expected to delay statewide reporting of results.

The longest extension was 45 minutes for a site in Sampson County. That means the state couldn't publicly report any statewide results until 8:15 p.m.

NORTH CAROLINA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RESULTS *Counties are colored red or blue when the % expected vote reporting reaches a set threshold. This threshold varies by state and is based on patterns of past vote reporting and expectations about how the vote will report this year.All Local 2020 Election Results

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Senate: Thom Tillis v. Cal Cunningham

It appears North Carolina voters are poised to give Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis six more years.

Tillis staked a claim to a victory in a speech to supporters in Mooresville, but the race had not yet been called.

Sen. Thom Tillis attacks Cal Cunningham, defends his own votes on SCOTUS, Obamacare

Cunningham bypassed uncomfortable questions about his extramarital activities in the final days of his closely contested race with Tillis.

Cunningham acknowledged three weeks ago that he exchanged sexually suggestive texts with a woman who is not his wife. A few days later, The Associated Press reported additional texts and interviews confirming they had an intimate encounter as recent as July - while Cunningham was deep in the hard-fought campaign.

Since then, Cunningham has largely stuck to tightly controlled virtual calls with interest groups that back him and small, unannounced in-person appearances so reporters can't ask questions. During the one online news conference he held, the Raleigh attorney and U.S. Army Reserve officer refused to directly answer whether he had had other affairs.

"I've taken responsibility for the hurt that I've caused in my personal life. I've apologized for it," Cunningham told reporters on Oct. 9. "I've said what I'm going to say about it."

Tillis and Republican allies jumped on Cunningham's reticence, running ads that question his trustworthiness in contrast with his TV-commercial persona as an Army officer who rooted out corrupt military contractors in Iraq. Some feature veterans. Tillis' campaign also says he's given more than two dozen interviews since Cunningham's lone news conference.

Cunningham's campaign raised $28.3 million in the third quarter, quadrupling what Tillis' raised, and allowing the Democrat to hammer away with TV ads. Cunningham outraised Tillis again in the first two weeks of October, according to campaign reports.

Tuesday night, Tillis claimed victory and thanked supporters in a speech.

The race has not yet been officially called and Cunningham has not conceded.

Cooper defeats Forest in closely watched NC governor's race

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has been reelected, defeating Republican challenger Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.

"To the people of North Carolina, thank you so much for electing me as your governor for another four years," Cooper said at a victory speech Tuesday night. "Serving in this office has been the honor of my life."

Cooper this November was banking on the support of voters who approved of his handling of the coronavirus, while Forest aimed to appeal to business owners and K-12 public school parents dissatisfied with the state's slow reopening.

Forest called Cooper just before 11 p.m. on Tuesday to concede.

Cooper thanked his family for their support before turning to matters at hand.

"For months, the nation has focused on North Carolina, and it's come down to counting the votes," Cooper said. "I know that there are a lot of important races that are too close to call, and we must let the process work to be sure that all the legal votes are counted."

NC House Race: Madison Cawthorn vs. Moe Davis

A 25-year-old candidate, Madison Cawthorn, won election to U.S. House in North Carolina's 11th Congressional District.

The win allows him to fill a vacant seat previously held by Republican Rep. Mark Meadows.

Meadows left to serve as President Donald Trump's chief of staff. Cawthorn defeated Democrat and retired U.S. Air Force Col. Moe Davis.

Cawthorn will be one of the youngest people to ever serve in the U.S. Congress.

Madison Cawthorn from Henderson County, North Carolina would be youngest member of CongressReal estate investment firm CEO Cawthorn handily defeated Lynda Bennett in the 11th Congressional District runoff. Bennett had received President Trump's endorsement.

NC State House, Senate control Democrats, Republicans battle for control of NC House, Senate

Democrats flipped two open U.S. House seats that they had been favored to win in North Carolina on Tuesday while Republicans defended two seats that had turned into competitive races, leaving the state's congressional delegation with an 8-5 split in favor of the GOP.

The congressional races were among key down-ballot races that also included contests that were determining the power balance in the state's legislature and the makeup of a group of key statewide offices.

The key presidential battleground also has a hotly contested U.S. Senate race and a closely watched governor's race. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper was reelected, defeating Republican challenger Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.

North Carolina Congressional Districts

Republican U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson has won reelection to his North Carolina seat in a district that runs through several southern counties.

Despite a mandated redrawing of the state's congressional map that helped make the race competitive, the ally of President Donald Trump won the Republican-leaning 8th Congressional District that is located in the southern portion of the state and includes the city of Concord.

His challenger, Democrat Patricia Timmons-Goodson, had served on North Carolina's state Supreme Court.

Hudson assumed office in 2013 and won his past reelection efforts handily.

The closely contested race had included a barrage of television ads from both sides.

Democrat Deborah Ross has been elected to an open U.S. House seat in North Carolina over Republican Alan Swain in a district redrawn to favor Democratic candidates.

The outcome in the Raleigh-area district was influenced by a court order that required the state to redraw its congressional map ahead of the 2020 election. The new boundaries in the district were expected to favor Democrats and narrow the GOP's majority in the state's congressional delegation. It represented the second district Democrats picked up on Tuesday, giving them five of the state's 13 U.S. House seats.

The seat was previously held by Republican Rep. George Holding, who announced his retirement last year.

Ross most recently ran for elected office in 2016, when she failed to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr. She previously served in the state House from 2003 to 2013.

NC Vote Count Ruling

The Supreme Court will allow absentee ballots in North Carolina to be received and counted up to nine days after Election Day.

The justices, by a 5-3 vote Wednesday, refused to disturb a decision by the State Board of Elections to lengthen the period from three to nine days because of the coronavirus pandemic, pushing back the deadline to Nov. 12. The board's decision was part of a legal settlement with a union-affiliated group.

Republicans had asked the high court to step in.

Under the Supreme Court's order, mailed ballots postmarked on or before Election Day must be received by 5 p.m. on Nov. 12 in order to be counted.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices in the majority. Three conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, dissented.

New Justice Amy Coney Barrett took no part in the case "because of the need for a prompt resolution and because she has not had time to fully review the parties' filings," court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat whose office defended the deadline extension in court, hailed the high court's decision in a statement. "North Carolina voters had a huge win tonight at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court upheld the State Board of Elections' effort to ensure that every eligible vote counts, even during a pandemic," he said. "Voters must have their mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day, but now we all have certainty that every eligible vote will be counted. Let's vote!"

Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger said the high court's order will undermine public confidence in government.

"The question is simple: May unelected bureaucrats on a state panel controlled by one political party overrule election laws passed by legislatures, even after ballots have already been cast? If public confidence in elections is important to our system of government, then hopefully the answer to that question is no," Berger said in a statement.

State and national Republican groups, including President Donald Trump's campaign, had filed separate but similar appeals asking the high court to make the state revert to a Nov. 6 deadline for accepting late-arriving ballots that were postmarked by Election Day. That three-day timeframe was specified in state law.

The appeals, including one led by the state's Republican legislative leaders, argued that the deadline change put in place by the State Board of Elections usurped legislators' constitutional authority to set rules for elections. They also said the change made after early voting started would create unequal treatment of voters who had cast ballots under previous, stricter rules.

The State Board of Elections had lengthened the period as part of a late September legal settlement with the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, a union-affiliated group represented by Marc Elias, a lawyer prominent in Democratic circles. The legal settlement, which also loosened requirements for fixing absentee ballots that lacked a witness signature, was approved by a state judge. The settlement said counties should have longer to accept ballots because of possible mail delays.

A federal judge later ruled that counties couldn't accept absentee ballots that lacked a witness signature but declined to intervene on the deadline extension.Gorsuch said the state legislature already had responded to voting challenges related to the pandemic by allowing absentee ballots to arrive three days after the election and still be counted. The election board and the state judge "worked together to override a carefully tailored legislative response to COVID," Gorsuch wrote.

The changes developed by the Democratic-majority state elections board and defended in court by Stein prompted accusations from Republican legislative leaders that state elections officials had cut a backroom deal to favor left-leaning candidates and causes. State House Speaker Tim Moore and Berger quickly moved to challenge the rule changes in state and federal court, as did the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and other national groups.