The 2014 United States Senate election in North Carolina took place on November 4, 2014, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of North Carolina, concurrently with other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections. The primary took place on May 6, 2014.
This was one of the seven Democratic-held Senate seats up for election in a state that Mitt Romney won in the 2012 presidential election.
Incumbent Democratic senator Kay Hagan ran for re-election to a second term in office and lost to Republican Thom Tillis, Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives by about 45,000 votes and a margin of 1.6%. This made the election the second-closest race of the 2014 Senate election cycle, behind only the election in Virginia. This is the last time a Senator from North Carolina lost re-election.
The eight Republican candidates on the 2014 U.S. Senate primary ballot were the most in party history in North Carolina, more than the seven on the ballot in the 2002 Republican primary won by Elizabeth Dole.
Primary<br />
Runoff<br />
In July 2014, Jim Morrill of The Charlotte Observer calculated that as of the end of June, more than $26 million had been spent by outside advocacy groups on the election, with $17 million of it attacking Hagan or supporting Tillis and less than $9 million supporting Hagan or attacking Tillis. By contrast, outside groups spent $25 million during the entire 2008 election. He reported that only $11.4 million had been reported to the FEC, with the rest of the "dark money" coming from groups that did not have to disclose their donors. 27% of the money spent supporting Tillis came from groups required to disclose their donors whereas 69% of the money supporting Hagan did so.
OpenSecrets placed the final cost of outside spending at $8.5 million for Hagan and $35.5 million attacking Tillis, and $13.7 million for Tillis and $20.9 million attacking Hagan, placing the totals by candidate at $44 million for Hagan, and $34.6 million for Tillis.
Three televised debates between the candidates were held: the first on September 3 moderated by Norah O'Donnell of CBS, the second on October 7 moderated by George Stephanopoulos of ABC, and the third (the only one to feature Sean Haugh) on October 9 moderated by Jon Evans of WECT-TV.
Video of the first debate is available here, with the second here and the third here.