Democratic state attorney general Roy Cooper won his first term in office, defeating Republican incumbent Pat McCrory.

However, when early results made it apparent that the margin would not change, McCrory conceded the race to Cooper on the afternoon of December 5.

[5] Both candidates addressed supporters around 12:30 am; Cooper declared victory, while McCrory vowed the race was not over and that every vote needed to be counted.

"[5] Republican Party of North Carolina Chairman Robin Hayes called Cooper's declaration of victory "rude and grossly premature.

[7] Once all ballots are counted, North Carolina election law allows either candidate to request a recount if the margin is fewer than 10,000 votes.

[133] McCrory's campaign said that the 90,000 votes added to the total late on election night appeared to have come from corrupted memory cards.

A campaign spokesman said, "What transpired in Durham County is extremely troubling and no citizen can have confidence in the results at this point in time.

"[133] On November 14, WRAL reported that there was speculation among political operatives about whether the race could possibly be contested and handed to the North Carolina General Assembly to determine the winner, as was done in 2005, when the General Assembly made June Atkinson the winner of a disputed election for the office of North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction.

[136] On November 15 Bladen County Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor McCrae Dowless, a Republican and the incumbent for reelection, filed a protest with that county's board of elections over several hundred absentee ballots cast for Cooper and other Democrats, claiming that they were fraudulent; on the basis of similarity of the handwriting with which they were filled out.

[137][138][139] The McCrory campaign alleged that the ballots were filled out by paid employees of the Bladen County Improvement Association PAC, a political action committee that received funding from the North Carolina Democratic Party.

That organization has responded that the people involved were volunteers with their get-out-the-vote effort, and that the only payments made to them were small stipends for expenses incurred as part of that activity; such as food and gas costs.

"[141] In response, the Cooper campaign stated: "Governor McCrory has set a new standard for desperation in his attempts to undermine the results of an election he lost.

McCrory announced on his campaign's YouTube channel that he was conceding the race to Cooper, saying that it was now clear that "the majority of our citizens had spoken.