New Polling Shows Rising Electricity Costs Top of Mind for North Carolina Voters
A recent survey of 902 registered voters across three swing districts in North Carolina shows concern about rising electricity costs and household affordability.
NC Sustainable Energy Association Leadership Fund commissioned a quantitative poll in September across three key competitive state legislative elections: House District 35, House District 37, and Senate District 7. These districts cover rapidly growing parts of Wake and New Hanover counties and are emblematic of suburban districts around the state of North Carolina. The polling data provide a glimpse into how voters are grappling with rising costs, their top priorities heading into the November election, and their overall approval / disapproval of elected leaders.
Initial Takeaways
Voters see cost of living and affordability as the most important issue heading into the election.
Three out of every four voters are compensating for higher energy costs by lowering electricity use, cutting back on other household spending, or delaying a home improvement or purchase.
Two-thirds of voters say there should be more ways to control their electricity costs, including the ability to generate, store, and manage more of their own electricity.
Polling from all three NC House and Senate show races are within the margin of error; Democrats leading in statewide races and generic Congressional ballots.
Note: For a full topline summary of poll results from HD-35, HD-37, and SD-7, please scroll to the bottom of this page.
Background
In national poll after national poll, voters across party lines are signaling their concerns with rising costs, and this being a significant driver of how they are showing up and who they are showing up for in this year’s midterm elections. Data consistently shows that households increasingly are paying more for everyday necessities like groceries, gasoline, and mortgages or rents. This same trend is just as pronounced with electricity bills - rising by double digit percentage points over the past five years across the country. In fact, North Carolinians have, on average, seen a rise in electricity bills by more than 23% since 2021. Those trends, unfortunately, do not appear to be slowing anytime soon as Duke Energy’s own long-term resource plan filed in October of 2025 outlined an average bill increase for customers of 2.1% each year over the next decade. These cost increases largely being driven by the need to add more infrastructure to keep up with significant new demand for electricity, driven largely by large load customers like data centers and manufacturers. Given some of these recent trends, we conducted polling to better understand how issues like household and utility affordability stack up against other voter concerns, how rising costs are impacting household behavior, the types of solutions voters would like to see driven by their elected officials, and overall approval / disapproval of current and future elected officials.
Across the three state legislative districts, polling was conducted to ensure respondents directly correlated with the current voter registration data.
Rising Energy Costs
The largest take away is half of all voters consider inflation and the economy as their primary concern going into election day, dwarfing all other policy considerations such as health care, foreign affairs, tax policy, education, public safety, and immigration combined. While economic concerns are always top of mind for voters going into an election, during the 2024 election multiple surveys showed that health care, immigration, and public safety were concerns that equaled or sometimes surpassed the economy as the top issue for North Carolinians. This showcases a dramatic shift in voters’ opinions and primary motivating factors going into the 2026 mid-term election.
When asked more directly about energy usage and costs in their home, four out of every five respondents were already concerned about their energy bill, and are forecasting further price increases in the future. The average North Carolina household has already seen an 23% increase on their energy bills over the last five years, and ratepayers see little relief in sight. Despite this, there is broad array of opinions as to what is the primary driving force behind these cost increases. Inflation was the primary choice for a quarter of the respondents, but voters also pointed to utility profits, rising natural gas costs, and data centers as other reasons for rising costs. Close to a fifth of respondents answered with a simple “I do not know.”
Furthermore, the negative impact from rising monthly electricity bills is clear, with three-quarters of respondents describing it as “somewhat” or “very much” a concern. A full 43% have indicated that it is very much a concern; despite this, only roughly 20% of folks say that they have some level of control over managing these costs, with the vast majority saying they had little to no control over price increases.
More than three quarters of respondents indicated that rising electricity costs have led their households to take some sort of action to manage overall household budgets. Voters indicated that rising electricity costs have caused their households to either reduce electricity use, reduce heating/cooling, cut back on household spending, or delay a home improvement or purchase.
Shifting towards potential solutions to addressing rising electricity costs, when offered a question on the ability to generate, store, and manage their own electricity, more than 80% of voters answered that this is somewhat, very, or extremely important. Finally, when asked about top priorities for energy policy in North Carolina, half of voters affirmed that affordability is their chief concern, above energy independence, economic growth, and reliability.
In summary, voters across swing districts throughout North Carolina are looking for legislative candidates who can help deliver on broader affordability concerns. With electricity affordability a significant component of rising household costs, North Carolinians are eager to see policy solutions that align with a pro-ratepayer agenda.
Job Approval: President, Governor, and the General Assembly
With this background in mind, our polling shows that voters in these districts resoundingly disapprove of the President’s job performance, where he is underwater 13 points in south Wake County, 20 points in north Wake, and more than 40 points on the coast. This broad disapproval is most certainly proving to be a drag on down-ballot Republican incumbents in these districts, where their own polling shows them to be running neck-in-neck with their Democrat challengers (more on that below).
Governor Stein, by contrast, is in much better shape, enjoying a 56-58% approval rating across all three districts. The General Assembly also is broadly supported, with 45-50% approving verses roughly 25% disapproval – the outlier district here is House District 37, where the General Assembly still received a 45% approval rating, but also received more than a 40% disapproval response from voters.
Voter Ideologies, Generic Ballot and the U.S. Senate Race
When asked about a generic ballot for the state legislature, Democrats held a more narrow 5–10-point lead, as opposed to a ballot for Congress where the Democrats held a larger 7-15-point advantage. This could indicate that voters have slightly divergent views on how the Republican party is operating in Washington as opposed to in Raleigh.
The Senate race also sees former Governor Roy Cooper running ahead of former RNC Chair Michael Whatley by a double-digit margin, which remains consistent with polling on this race throughout the year. Follow-up questions to respondents on their opinion of both candidates shows that Governor Cooper is more known across the state, with only 19% unsure of their opinion, compared to 31% for Mr. Whatley.
Full Poll Results Across North Carolina House District 35, House District 37, and Senate District 7