North Carolina Heads Into Election Day, Republican Ted Budd Maintains Lead

(Left) Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Cheri Beasley speaks at a canvassing event in Greensboro, N.C., on Nov. 7, 2022. (Right) Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ted Budd speaks at the NCGOP state convention in Greenville, N.C., on June 5, 2021. Sean Rayford/Getty Images; Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.—Election Day has finally arrived in North Carolina, where the battle for a vacant Senate seat could help decide which of the two main political parties controls the upper chamber.

Most polls have three-term Republican Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) coming into the final showdown with a steady lead over his Democrat opponent, former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley. North Carolina hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008.

More than 2 million North Carolina voters had already taken advantage of the early voting opportunity to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day. They account for about 29 percent of the state’s 7.4 million registered voters, the North Carolina State Board of Elections said.

The 17-day early voting period, which concluded on Saturday afternoon, saw a total of 2,152,369 ballots cast, including 140,517 by mail. According to data released by the State Board, 38 percent of early voters were registered Democrats, 31 percent were registered Republicans and 30 percent were unaffiliated.

A polling location in Winston Salem, North Carolina on November 8, 2022. Bill Pan/The Epoch Times

The North Carolina race, like many others taking place this year across the United States, has the Republican candidate emphasizing the economy and the Democrat candidate raising the issues of abortion, climate change, and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach.

In his final message to voters, Budd continued to link Beasley to President Joe Biden and inflation.

“About two months ago, when parents were getting their kids back in school, they’re saying, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to buy new blue jeans, a new backpack and put gas in my tank and groceries on my table in the very same week,’” he said Monday in an interview with Fox News. “Everything that Joe Biden has done is everything that Cheri Beasley would do.”

Biden remains deeply unpopular in North Carolina, where he lost to President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. In the most recent approval rating poll conducted by High Point University among North Carolinians in late August, only 35 percent of respondents said Biden was doing his job well, while 56 percent said he wasn’t.

Beasley has been distancing herself from members of the Biden administration. When Kamala Harris visited Durham in September, Beasley’s campaign told local news outlets that she would rather focus on her own activities than join any events with the vice president.

Highlighting her experience on the state’s highest court, Beasley said she disagrees with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and vowed to help codify abortion as a right.

“As your Senator, I will not hesitate to be the 51st vote to end the filibuster and codify Roe nationwide,” she wrote on Twitter. “My opponent doesn’t think women should have the freedom to decide about their own health care, and supports banning abortions with zero exceptions.”

Beasley also attacked Budd’s actions in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Stop the Steal rally, calling him an “election denier” for questioning the integrity of the 2020 presidential election results.

Polling locations across North Carolina opened at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 pm. Unofficial election results will be reported as they become available on the State Board’s Election Results Dashboard. The State Board said they expect the unofficial results reported by the end of election night to include about 99 percent of all ballots cast.