North Carolina holds special election for last House seat of 2018

Voters will be going to the polls until 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to cast their ballots in the closely contested North Carolina 9th Congressional District race between Democrat Dan McCready and Republican Dan Bishop, the one seat outstanding from the 2018 midterm elections.

A poll released Sunday morning by the Coefficient Group found that McReady and Bishop are tied at 44 percent, with 7 percent of voters undecided. The 9th District has been reliably Republican in the past, and President Trump won the district handily in 2016. 

McCready lost the original election in 2018 to Republican candidate Mark Harris by a slim 925 votes, but those election results were thrown out over allegations of absentee ballot fraud intended to help Harris. Harris did not run in the subsequent special election.

The race has attracted some high-profile attention from Democratic presidential candidates and the president himself. Mr. Trump rallied for Bishop Monday in Fayetteville, and he warned the crowd, “A vote for any Democrat in 2020, and a vote for any Democrat tomorrow is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream.”

Vice President Mike Pence and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney also visited the state on Monday for get-out-the-vote events for Bishop on the other side of the congressional district. 

As of Monday morning, Democratic voters were outpacing Republicans in early voting by about 7 percentage points.

McCready acknowledged the closeness of this race at a campaign event in Cumberland County on Sunday. “Let’s just say it like it is — this thing is going to be close,” McCready said, adding, “This is going to come down to hundreds of votes.” 

A presidential battleground state that Mr. Trump narrowly won in 2016, North Carolina will also have elections for governor and the U.S. next year. The race in the 9th District is seen as an early indicator of how the state and Republican-leaning suburbs nationwide are feeling as 2020 approaches.