It's 4:38 a.m., and the N.C. State Board of Elections has yet to post Rockingham County's provisional votes, which the county says it counted Tuesday night. Democrats in North Carolina have plenty of reason to feel good this morning anyway. Chuck Hubbard, against expectations, leads Rep. Virginia Foxx by 325 votes in the State Board's published results. Rockingham County's reported provisional tally would add another 10 votes to his lead, bringing it to 335.
The State Board's unofficial numbers are Hubbard 139,672 and Foxx 139,347. On Tuesday morning, the lead was 99. Nine of the district's ten counties have posted their provisional results. Rockingham has not, but a county spokesperson told WXII 12 News that its board counted Tuesday night, Hubbard 116, Foxx 106 and Robert Luffman 5, and that the numbers will be uploaded to the state Thursday.
In 2024, Foxx beat Hubbard by about 19 points, under the district's old lines.
Defend the Vote was a rally to thank voters and election workers and follow the results as they became public, put on by Down Home North Carolina, Indivisible High Country, High Country Peace & Justice, Common Cause NC and Indivisible Neers. At 5 p.m., a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk between the Watauga County Administration Building and the courthouse. The plan was simple. Thank the people counting the ballots, follow the results as they came in, and pin a pink slip to a board saying why you voted.
We were there when the numbers turned.
When the rally started, Foxx was ahead by 33 votes. At 5:05, she was ahead by 38, her largest lead of the day.
Donna Lisenby of Indivisible High Country, who has also written for left917, stood with her phone, reading the numbers aloud as they appeared on the State Board's website. Watauga's. Guilford's. One county at a time.
Then the numbers moved.
At 5:47, results from Guilford and Stokes put Hubbard back in front, by 196 votes. Thirteen minutes later, at 6 p.m., Watauga's provisional ballots arrived, Hubbard 186, Foxx 57 and Robert Luffman 12. Hubbard's lead grew to 325.
The crowd was standing on King Street in Boone as Watauga's own provisional ballots helped push Hubbard further ahead. In 55 minutes, the race had shifted 363 votes toward him.
Rev. Joel Simpson, a United Methodist pastor with the Poor People's Campaign who lives in the 5th District, thanked election workers "for counting every eligible vote" and said the crowd was "depending on them to certify the results."
He put his own position plainly,
"I'm the let every vote be counted kind of Christian. Not call elections fraudulent and stolen because you didn't get your way kind of Christian."
He closed with the Poor People's Campaign call and response, forward together, not one step back.
Dolly Reaves, Ashe County field organizer for Down Home North Carolina, made a similar appeal, telling the crowd,
"If you thought your vote did not count before, I do hope you see now just how vital it is."
Reaves's message was about organizing beyond Election Day.
"Power comes from two sources. Organized money and organized people. The results are coming in and I do believe this time the people have won."
The crowd was asked to connect with representatives of local organizations and sign up to take action. Then came a 1970s Chilean protest chant. The people united will never be defeated.
How the day went
Between Ashe's results at 2:31 p.m. and Watauga's at 6, Hubbard's lead shrank to 4, flipped to Foxx, grew to 38 for her, then swung back to Hubbard and out to 325. The lead changed hands twice in about three and a half hours.
Since Monday's results, Hubbard has gained 638 votes and Foxx 412, a net gain of 226 for Hubbard.
Wallin leads in House 93
Down the ballot, in the N.C. House District 93 race, which covers Ashe, Alleghany and most of Watauga, Democrat Charlie Wallin leads Republican Rep. Ray Pickett by 345 votes, 19,075 to 18,730, in the State Board's unofficial results. Provisional ballots in that race broke 200 to 82.
What's left
Rockingham had 340 provisional ballots, according to the State Board's Nov. 5 count. A county spokesperson told WXII 12 News that 227 votes in the 5th District race came from those ballots, Hubbard 116, Foxx 106 and Luffman 5. That would add 10 votes to Hubbard's lead.
That leaves military and overseas ballots postmarked by Election Day, which can still arrive through 5 p.m. Thursday. We don't have a count of how many are out. With Rockingham's numbers added, Foxx would need a net of 336 votes among whatever ballots remain to win outright.
What happens next
The 335-vote lead, including Rockingham's reported but not yet state-posted count, remains unofficial. County boards conduct their canvasses Friday, Nov. 13, at 11 a.m. This is the formal process in which each board confirms that ballots have been properly counted and authenticates its results.
The State Board will certify the race at its Nov. 24 canvass.
A candidate can demand a recount if the official margin is 1 percent or less of the votes cast. For a congressional race spanning multiple counties, that request must reach the State Board by noon Tuesday, Nov. 17. At 335 votes out of approximately 286,800 cast, the margin is about 0.12 percent, inside the line that lets a trailing candidate ask for a recount. We don't know whether Foxx would.
For now, every number remains unofficial. County results are available at left917.net/vote/map. For the running account of Tuesday's results, including each county's numbers as they came in, see 99 Votes, One Afternoon.