RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who trailed in the polls throughout the campaign, was leading Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham, giving Republicans a boost in their hopes of retaining control of the U.S. Senate.
Tillis declared victory Tuesday night at his results watch party in Mooresville. Cunningham has not conceded the race nor has The Associated Press called it.
With more than 5.48 million votes counted, Tillis had 48% of the vote and Cunningham had less than 47% of the vote. Libertarian Party candidate Shannon Bray was at about 3%, and Constitution Party candidate Kevin Hayes was at 1%.
Tillis, 60, trailed when the results started to come in, but he slowly and steadily gained ground on Cunningham before finally overtaking him. Cunningham had a large edge in absentee by-mail ballots, but Tillis led in early in-person voting and in Election Day voting.
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There are 117,000 outstanding absentee by-mail ballots, according to the state board. They must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by Nov. 12 to be counted.
If Tillis wins, it would be a massive comeback from a polling standpoint. Cunningham, according to both campaigns, held a solid lead at the end of September before an infidelity scandal upended the race, and had a money advantage. Tillis also trailed in polling throughout his 2014 victory against Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan.
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“What we accomplished tonight was a stunning victory. And we did it,” Tillis told cheering supporters.
He thanked his supporters, volunteers and staff for “letting everybody know that the truth still does matter, everybody know that character still matters, and let everybody know that keeping your promises still matters.”
His narrow lead mirrored that of several Republican statewide candidates.
Cunningham never made a public appearance at North Carolina Democrats' results-watch party, nor did he talk to the media Tuesday night.
Cunningham, 47, largely avoided the media during the last month of the campaign, preferring instead to meet small groups of voters and avoid questions about alleged affairs. A married father of two, he apologized for the hurt he had caused his family after confirming the authenticity of sexual text messages sent between him and a California woman.
The woman, married to an injured military veteran, told The Associated Press that the pair was intimate as recently as July. Cunningham, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, is under investigation by the Army.
The scandal may have been precisely the break Tillis needed in the race to buck a North Carolina trend and win a second six-year term.
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