The 2016 North Carolina Attorney General election was held on November 8, 2016, to elect the Attorney General of North Carolina, concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as elections to the United States Senate and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
Incumbent Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper chose not to run for re-election to a fifth term in office, and instead successfully ran for Governor.
Primary elections were held on March 15, 2016.
Democratic former state senator Josh Stein defeated Republican state senator Buck Newton in the general election. With a margin of 0.4%, this was the closest attorney general race of the 2016 election cycle.
Attorney Tim Dunn had announced in November 2014 that he planned to run for attorney general if Roy Cooper did not run for re-election. Cooper did run for governor as expected, but Dunn did not make any further announcements and did not end up running.