Former Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper reached 50 percent support among likely 2026 general election voters in a new statewide Senate poll, expanding his advantage over Republican Michael Whatley.
Cooper leads Whatley 50 percent to 39 percent in a Harper Polling survey for Carolina Journal, conducted May 10-11 among 600 likely voters in North Carolina’s 2026 general election. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points at a 95 percent confidence interval.
The result is Cooper’s largest lead in the provided Harper Polling trend line. Cooper led Whatley by four points in September 2025, by eight points in March 2026, and by 11 points in May 2026.
The survey follows other polling that has shown Cooper ahead in the race. Breitbart News reported March 30 that a Nexus Strategies survey for Healthier United found Cooper at 50 percent, Whatley at 32.3 percent, Libertarian Shannon Bray at four percent, and 13.8 percent undecided among 800 registered North Carolina voters surveyed March 8-9. That poll found Cooper leading among unaffiliated voters, with 48.8 percent backing Cooper, 25.5 percent backing Whatley, 5.1 percent backing Bray, and 19.6 percent unsure.
Breitbart News also reported at the time that other surveys showed narrower margins, including a Carolina Journal poll conducted March 22-23 that had Cooper ahead 49 percent to 41 percent and a Public Policy Polling survey from March 13-14 that had Cooper at 47 percent and Whatley at 44 percent, within that poll’s margin of error.
Breitbart News reported May 8 that almost half of the roughly 3,500 convicts released under former Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration during the coronavirus pandemic went on to reoffend, citing North Carolina’s Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission’s finding of a 48 percent recidivism rate among those released through the settlement, higher than the 44 percent rate for nearly 13,000 inmates released during fiscal year 2021. Breitbart also cited the New York Post’s finding that more than 600 later committed serious felonies and reported that 18 have since been charged with murder, while Whatley told Breitbart News Daily that Cooper released 51 people serving life sentences and “hundreds of violent criminals, rapists, pedophiles,” adding that “Roy Cooper owes the people of North Carolina an explanation.”
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