Raymond Smith Flips North Carolina’s 3rd District in 293-Vote Win

Democrat Raymond Smith has flipped North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District, defeating Republican Representative Greg Murphy by 293 votes after a week of counting provisional ballots — a result that gives Democrats their 237th seat in the House of Representatives and ends Republican control of the district that had lasted since 1995.

Murphy conceded on Wednesday, 11 November, a week after the midterm elections, in a social media post congratulating his opponent. “I want to congratulate Representative-Elect Raymond Smith on his successful election for the Third District Congressional seat,” Murphy wrote, according to The Hill.

CNN’s Decision Desk projected Smith as the winner, describing the result as Democrats flipping “another deep red House seat in North Carolina”.

A lead that changed hands

On election night, Murphy led Smith by 233 votes and declared victory in the early hours of 4 November, despite thousands of ballots still uncounted. Smith disputed that declaration, pointing to roughly 6,000 provisional ballots that had yet to be counted across the district’s nine counties.

As county boards counted provisional ballots — and absentee ballots whose defects voters had fixed — the lead changed hands. By Wednesday, Smith was ahead by about the same margin Murphy had held on election night. Unofficial figures from the State Board of Elections, reported by Carolina Journal, put Smith on 118,488 votes (49.43 per cent) to Murphy’s 118,195 (49.31 per cent), with Libertarian Daniel Cavender on 3,007 (1.25 per cent).

The margin of 293 votes is about 0.12 per cent of the 239,690 votes cast, well inside the threshold at which Murphy could request a recount. His concession statement suggests he will not do so. Results remain unofficial until county canvass meetings, held on Friday, 13 November, with the State Board of Elections due to certify multi-county races on 24 November.

A map drawn to help Republicans

The result is the latest twist in a North Carolina redistricting story that has backfired on the Republicans who drew the map. Last autumn, the Republican-controlled General Assembly redrew the state’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts, moving Greene, Lenoir, Wayne and Wilson counties from the 1st into the 3rd. The stated aim, in the words of Senator Ralph Hise, was a map that “should perform to elect 11 Republicans”.

Instead, the map elected 11 Democrats. The redrawn 1st District, strengthened for Republicans in an attempt to unseat Democratic Representative Don Davis, returned Davis anyway — and the reshaped 3rd became competitive enough for Smith to take a seat Republicans had held since 1995. Political scientists call the phenomenon “dummymandering”: a party’s effort to give itself an electoral advantage by redrawing maps ends up favouring its opponents.

Smith, a Black Army veteran of the Gulf War and a former two-term member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, won the four counties moved into the 3rd District by 2,532 votes, largely driven by Wilson County. Donald Trump carried the district by about 14 points in 2024 on the lines used this year, and by 60 per cent of ballots before the redraw.

A veteran’s win in a wave year

Smith’s victory also completes a notable pattern in North Carolina, where two Army veterans flipped two seats that Trump carried by double digits. Richard Ojeda, a retired Army major, defeated Richard Hudson in the 9th District on election night, while Smith — a military policeman in the Army and Army Reserve — passed Murphy in the 3rd once provisional ballots were added to the count.

The two veterans averaged just under 16 points of swing against Trump’s 2024 margins, a measure of how far the Democratic wave reached into Republican-leaning territory in the state. Smith’s swing of 13.8 points was among the smaller moves in the state, but it was enough: the redrawn 3rd needed a swing of 13.6 points to change hands, and Smith cleared the line by about a tenth of a point.

The flip also matters for the balance of power in Washington. With Smith’s seat, Democrats hold 237 seats in the House, consolidating the majority they won in the midterms. The White House has already warned the incoming Democratic chair of the House Oversight Committee that the Trump administration “will not be extorted”, in a letter to Representative Robert Garcia obtained by CNN, as the new majority prepares congressional investigations.

Earlier, Democrats flipped four more seats in North Carolina as the AP called races.

What happens next

Smith will take his seat when the 120th Congress is sworn in on 3 January. For Republicans, the lesson of North Carolina is already being debated: the party aimed to win the 1st and 3rd Districts and six additional districts drawn to give their candidates a significant advantage, only to see them flip to Democratic control.

In 2028, Republicans will be aiming to win back the 1st and 3rd Districts. For now, though, the map they drew to elect 11 Republicans has elected 11 Democrats — and the last of those seats was decided by fewer than 300 votes.