As election results nationally are increasingly a much better picture for Democrats that most everyone expected, North Carolina’s “Red Wave” results in legislative races seem like a mysterious outlier.

Another N.C. House candidate where the vote tallies are close said Thursday that he’s not yet ready to concede defeat.

Now that I’ve had some sleep and lots more caffeine after the election results came in, here’s some thoughts on the lessons we can learn from this year:

There will be a lot of new legislators in January, and because many of them weren’t in competitive districts, odds are you haven’t heard much about them.

New mailers in a close Wilson House race claim that Republican candidate Ken Fontenot “took cash” from “out-of-state billionaires” who own Wilson Medical Center, which has been under investigation for patient care issues.

One of the weirdest legislative races this year has been Guilford County’s House District 59, where redistricting put House Majority Whip Jon Hardister, R-Guilford, into a redrawn district where President Joe Biden got about 500 more votes than President Donald Trump.

Democrats running in highly competitive suburban races this year are going to great lengths to paint themselves as moderates.

Yesterday we reported on the N.C. Republican Party’s third-quarter fundraising and spending. As of Thursday, we have the N.C. Democratic Party’s numbers for comparison.

Which N.C. Senate districts will be the most competitive on Tuesday? For an idea, we can look to how the N.C. Senate Majority Fund is spending the $7.47 million it’s raised this cycle.

I’ll admit this district wasn’t on my list of competitive seats until I started seeing campaign ads in recent weeks.

In a hotly contested northern Wake County House race, Democratic N.C. Rep. Terence Everitt’s campaign has a new ad out this week tying his Republican opponent to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The N.C. Democratic Leadership Committee (the fundraising committee for Democrats on the Council of State) spent $2.18 million in the second quarter, almost all of it funneled to Gov. Roy Cooper’s campaign committee.

Weeks after Democrats cried foul over Photoshopped images in campaign ads, a TV commercial for a Democratic House candidate that features Gov. Roy Cooper also includes a fake mugshot for a Republican House candidate.