North Carolina Senate race puts affordability front and center

CONCORD, N.C. — Rachel Wagoner describes Concord, North Carolina, as the kind of place where she always envisioned raising her three children: safe, with good schools, a lively downtown and neighborhoods filled with families.

But lately, that idyllic life has become harder to afford. Wagoner’ husband works outside of the home while she stays home with their children, but rising grocery and gasoline costs have squeezed the family’s budget enough that she has spent the past year considering going back to a paid job.

“It gets harder and harder to make ends meet,” Wagoner told CNBC. Things her family once considered routine “have now become a luxury, like eating out and coming and shopping downtown.”

The cost-of-living squeeze has become a defining issue in North Carolina’s pivotal open Senate race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, as well as in numerous other contests that will determine control of the chamber.

Meanwhile, Concord keeps growing. Across Cabarrus County, just northeast of Charlotte, subdivisions are spreading, major employers are expanding and billions of dollars in investment are pouring in, including from Eli Lilly. Unemployment is low and poverty is below the national rate. 

Essentially, the county is prospering by most measures. Yet talk to many residents, and that prosperity feels out of reach.

“Everything feels big,” said Nichole Mattes, a mother in nearby Kannapolis who said rent, gasoline and groceries have left her living paycheck to paycheck. “You can’t be a single-income household right now. … It feels impossible.”

Senate candidate and former two-term Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has spent months campaigning under the slogan “Make Stuff Cost Less.”

“From the grocery store to the gas station, working families here in Concord and around the state are hurting as prices skyrocket,” Cooper said at a Sept. 2 event.

His opponent, Republican Michael Whatley, is trying to flip the script by arguing that Democrats like Cooper helped create today’s affordability headaches.

The former Republican National Committee chair and a close ally of President Donald Trump has pointed to increases in energy, healthcare and housing costs during Cooper’s tenure and attacked his opposition to Republican tax cuts.

“If Candidate Cooper wants to ‘make stuff cost less,’ he oughta look in the mirror,” Whatley campaign spokesman DJ Griffin said in a statement to CNBC.

It’s up to voters to choose who to blame, said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina.

“Both candidates know people are dissatisfied and feeling the squeeze,” Bitzer told CNBC. “Cooper wants voters focused on what they are paying now. Whatley wants them to trace those costs through Cooper’s tenure in Raleigh and the inflation of the Biden years.”

Cabarrus as a measuring stick

Cabarrus County and its Charlotte suburbs provide a prime test case to see which explanation breaks through, said Christopher Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University who is not related to Roy Cooper.

The county remains Republican territory, but by considerably smaller margins than a decade ago. Trump won Cabarrus by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016, but his margin fell to 9.5 points in 2020 and 7.6 points in 2024.

Part of that shift has come as Charlotte’s growth has pushed farther outward, bringing more Democratic-leaning voting patterns into once-rural and exurban communities, Christopher Cooper told CNBC.

“You see an influx of people coming from Charlotte,” Willie Brown, who has lived in the area for six years, told CNBC. “You saw all the new apartment complexes building up right here.”

The political shift is not unique to the Cabarrus suburbs. In battleground Georgia, for instance, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won Georgia’s suburban Cobb County by more than 12 percentage points in 2012. Twelve years later, former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried it by nearly 15 points.

But growth has put more pressure on household budgets.

In Cabarrus, the median household earns about $89,000 a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator estimates that two working parents with two children would need $113,966 in combined annual income before taxes to cover basic expenses there — roughly $25,000 more than the countywide median household income.

For Wagoner, closing that financial gap could mean finding a second paycheck. But returning to work would also mean giving up some of what she values most about staying home while potentially bringing new costs of its own.

“It would really hurt our children too,” she said.

MIT estimates childcare costs around $22,466 a year for a Cabarrus household with two working adults and two children.

A national issue, a North Carolina test

So far, Cooper’s message seems to be breaking through the most. 

He’s held a consistent polling advantage throughout the race, though at least one poll shows the race tightening. High Point University had him leading Whatley 50% to 42% among likely voters in April. By August, the gap had narrowed to 50% to 45%.

The April survey was conducted March 26-April 6 and included a sample of 703 likely voters. The August survey was conducted Aug. 3-Aug. 12 and included a sample of 660 likely voters. Because both were online surveys rather than randomized polls, High Point did not include a margin of error.

That narrowing comes as Whatley becomes better known. An Elon University poll conducted in late July found 53% of registered voters had heard at least “some” about him, up from 35% in a March Elon poll. The corresponding figure for Cooper in the July poll was 84%.

The July survey was conducted July 23-July 31 and included a final sample of 800 North Carolina adults. The March survey was conducted March 13-March 20 and also included 800 adults. Both were conducted online by YouGov; the margin of error for registered voters was plus or minus about 4.4 percentage points in each poll.

Still, Bitzer said, Cooper remains well-positioned, buoyed by a personal brand built over decades in North Carolina politics and two gubernatorial wins while Trump carried the state.

“Cooper has an authenticity with rural voters that many Democrats struggle to match,” Bitzer said. “It doesn’t come across as patronizing.” 

That could come in handy in Republican-leaning areas like Cabarrus, where Democrats do not necessarily need to win to improve their statewide position. 

“Cooper just needs to keep Cabarrus close, and that would be a good sign,” Christopher Cooper said. “He’s had success in the past limiting Democratic losses outside the state’s major population centers.”

But those margins are ultimately made up of voters like Wagoner. She describes herself as an independent and told CNBC she has not settled on a Senate candidate. Asked whether affordability would influence her vote, Wagoner did not hesitate. 

“Oh, of course,” she said.

Mattes, meanwhile, is still learning about the candidates. Brown also said he plans to vote but has not settled on a candidate, telling CNBC that healthcare and the cost of living are among the issues that matter most.

“Concord is a great place to live,” he said. “But … hopefully we can afford it.”