Debates • Complete video of debate, October 11, 2016 -
C-SPAN • Complete video of debate, October 18, 2016 -
C-SPAN Predictions Polling Aggregate polls with Pat McCrory with Phil Berger with Dan Forest Preliminary results and legal battle {{Election box begin Polls closed at 7:30 pm on
election day. On election night, as votes were tallied, Cooper held an early lead, but was overtaken by McCrory around 9:30 pm, and McCrory held the lead for most of the evening. Shortly before midnight, McCrory held a 60,000 vote lead until a block of 90,000 votes from
Durham County was added to the total, putting Cooper back in the lead by fewer than 5,000 votes out of 4,500,000 cast. Both candidates addressed supporters around 12:30 am; Cooper declared victory, while McCrory vowed the race was not over and that every vote needed to be counted. Additionally, election administrators "must decide the eligibility of more than 60,000 provisional ballots and the validity of thousands of challenged votes."), while McCrory hired lawyers from
Virginia-based firm Holtzman Vogel Josefiak. McCrory's campaign said that the 90,000 votes added to the total late on election night appeared to have come from corrupted memory cards. A campaign spokesman said, "What transpired in Durham County is extremely troubling and no citizen can have confidence in the results at this point in time." North Carolina House
Speaker Tim Moore said getting the General Assembly involved would be "an absolute last resort". Also on November 14, WRAL reported that the State Bureau of Investigation was investigating whether crimes were committed in the mishandling of 1,000 ballots in the March 2016 primaries in Durham County, the likely epicenter of the battle over the gubernatorial race. The Durham County electoral board chairman said there was no connection between the investigation and the gubernatorial race. The McCrory campaign alleged that the ballots were filled out by paid employees of the Bladen County Improvement Association PAC, a
political action committee that received funding from the
North Carolina Democratic Party. It said there were at least 250 questionable ballots connected to five people paid by the Bladen County Improvement Association PAC. That organization has responded that the people involved were volunteers with their get-out-the-vote effort, and that the only payments made to them were small stipends for expenses incurred as part of that activity; such as food and gas costs. In response, the Cooper campaign stated: "Governor McCrory has set a new standard for desperation in his attempts to undermine the results of an election he lost." On November 16, the McCrory campaign announced it had filed election protests alleging fraud in 11 more counties. On November 17, the McCrory campaign announced the number of counties in which it had filed protests alleging voter fraud had grown to 50 counties, which the
Associated Press reported were "without offering detailed proof." Durham County has been seen as the most pivotal county, as it has the most votes at stake. At the hearing on November 18, the board unanimously dismissed the protest, with the board's Republican chairman, William Brian Jr., saying that all the evidence shows that the count is correct. By November 18, Cooper's unofficial advantage over McCrory had grown to about 6,600 votes, out of almost 4.7 million cast. They decided to convene another meeting on November 22 to issue guidance to county boards on how to handle the protests. On November 22, the McCrory campaign formally requested a statewide recount. Civitas said that neither the McCrory campaign nor the state Republican Party were involved in the lawsuit. Civitas cited a 2012 review conducted by the state Board of Elections that found 2.44% of voters who used same-day registration in 2012 failed the verification process, but the process was not completely finished when the ballots were counted. On November 26, the Durham County Republican Party's general counsel asked the state Board of Elections to hold an expedited hearing on his appeal of the Durham County Board of Elections' refusal to conduct a recount of that county's votes. The campaign stated they would withdraw their request for a statewide recount if a manual recount of Durham County votes produced the same results as were reported on election day. On November 30, the State Board of Elections ordered a recount of the Durham County votes. The recount was to be completed by 7 p.m. on December 5. However, by that morning, early results showed no change in the tally. McCrory announced on his campaign's YouTube channel that he was conceding the race to Cooper, saying that it was now clear that "the majority of our citizens had spoken."
Official results {{Election box begin {{align|right|
Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican •
Bladen (largest town:
Elizabethtown) •
Gates (largest town:
Gatesville) •
Martin (largest town:
Williamston) •
Robeson (largest city:
Lumberton)
Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic •
Chatham (largest municipality:
Siler City) •
Forsyth (largest town:
Winston-Salem) •
Granville (largest city:
Oxford) •
Jackson (largest town:
Sylva) •
Mecklenburg (largest municipality:
Charlotte) •
Nash (largest city:
Rocky Mount) •
New Hanover (largest municipality:
Wilmington) •
Wake (largest town:
Raleigh) •
Watauga (largest town:
Boone) ==Aftermath==