North Carolina

Advance North Carolina (“Advance Carolina”) builds year-round, statewide infrastructure to support political and economic power building across the state of North Carolina, with a particular focus on improving outcomes in the Black and Brown communities. From rural counties to urban centers containing sizable populations of Black college students and emerging voters, Advance Carolina seeks to make connections to the political process for people who don’t see themselves or their issues inside the current democratic framework and to hold elected officials accountable to a people-centered agenda. Advance Carolina’s core belief is that a truly representative democracy must be shaped by the leadership and full participation of Black communities.

Recent Achievements

In the face of North Carolina’s rightward swing, Advance Carolina has worked during and since the 2024 election to counter voter suppression and shore up democracy.

With Flip the Vote’s support, in 2024 Advance Carolina reached over 4.7 million voters, helping to:

• Keep the Democratic margin of loss well below the national average (2% rightward shift from 2020 compared to 6% nationally in the presidential race)

• Hold 4 Democratic US House seats despite Republican redistricting in 2023, including CD-1 in which the Democratic incumbent, Don Davis, won by less than 2% in a district that voted for Trump

• Win elections of Democratic governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and secretary of state

• Break the GOP supermajority in the state house despite Republican redistricting intended to preserve the supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature

• Re-elect state supreme court justice Allison Riggs and defend her fairly-won seat while Republicans tried to overturn it and disenfranchise more than 65,000 voters

• Narrowly defeat Q-Anon conspiracy theorist and January 6 attendee Michele Morrow in the race for superintendent of public instruction, electing Mo Green by just 2.3 percentage points as the first Black person to hold the position

In 2025, Advance Carolina made significant base-building and electoral strides through more than 50,000 voter door conversations and more than 1,500 relational 1:1 meetings, resulting in five Democratic mayoral victories and laying the groundwork for 2026. In Guilford County — one of their core organizing hubs — voter turnout increased by 20% from the 2023 municipal election.

Through their base building and voter education efforts, in partnership with their sister c3 organization NC Black Alliance, Advance Carolina convened town halls and conducted accountability campaigns in counties where lawmakers consistently crossed party lines to help override the governor’s vetoes. The result was incumbent lawmakers being ousted in the 2026 primaries by a large margin, a win for combined grassroots organizing with strategic electoral accountability.

Advance Carolina’s Emerging Voters Program focuses tailored voter education and mobilization efforts on youth (ages 18-35), reaching them on college campuses as well as at festivals and other events where youth congregate. Listening to these potential voters enables Advance Carolina to tailor their approach to their pressing economic and environmental concerns and values.

Advance Carolina invests in education and resistance through their Black and Brown Policy Network, which organizes direct action opportunities and leads statewide coalition efforts around issue-based and legislative advocacy in areas such as environmental and climate justice, democracy and economic empowerment, health equity, and justice such as representation in the courts and criminal legal reform.

What makes North Carolina crucial in 2026

• Democrats must defend a US House seat (CD-1) to protect Don Davis, one of the country’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbents

• Democrats can flip an open Republican-held US Senate seat, an outcome that is key to Democrats taking back the majority in the Senate

• State supreme court justice Anita Earls is up for re-election; holding her seat will be necessary to flip the court in 2028

• Building up the Democratic electorate is critical in advance of the 2028 presidential (and another US Senate) race

• Making inroads in down-ballot races, including state courts of appeal, state legislature, and other offices, will significantly impact North Carolinian’s lives and rights

What Flip the Vote’s support means for 2026

Advance Carolina’s year-round efforts to build durable political power, with a special focus on rural communities, succeed through coordinated community support, targeted advocacy, and a disciplined electoral strategy. Advance Carolina has ambitious initiatives this year to target and expand their reach to likely Democratic voters, especially in rural areas, to elevate seven Black congressional candidates, and to impact statewide elections. Flip the Vote’s support can help them achieve their goals by enabling early investment in voter engagement, organizing opportunities for advocacy on key issues, and recruiting and training staff and local leadership.

Advance Carolina is working to “unblock the Black voting bloc” by conducting direct voter outreach in 26 counties, including launching an innovative campaign to rebuild influence in gerrymandered and historically underinvested Eastern North Carolina and deepening infrastructure in Charlotte, which is home to the state’s largest Black population. They have hired organizers throughout CD-1 to add capacity in Black communities to anchor base-building efforts and connect with potential voters. These efforts are possible due in part to Flip the Vote’s ongoing support, which enabled Advance Carolina to retain and develop staff and infrastructure for this work.