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Senate District 16

Wake County · 2026
Likely D
Partisan baseline (2024)
D+33.5
runs 35.2 pts more Democratic than NC overall · moving toward Democrats since 2018
2024 result
Uncontested
no major-party opponent filed · Adcock (D) unopposed
Sen. Gale Adcock
Democrat · Incumbent
  • Gale Adcock is a family nurse practitioner and the Democratic state senator for District 16 in Wake County.
  • She was chief health officer at SAS Institute and served in the NC House from 2015 to 2023 before moving to the Senate in 2023.
campaign site
Philip Hensley
Republican · Candidate
  • Philip Hensley is a small business owner.
  • He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina.

Election night results

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Live returns and a precinct map for this race on Nov. 3.

Early voting

See early voting ›

Ballots cast so far in this district, in person and by mail. Updated every morning.

Who lives here

The people of Senate District 16, from the Census American Community Survey (2020-2024). The dark tick on each bar marks North Carolina overall.

Median household income
$97,682
NC
▲ vs NC · NC $75k
Bachelor's degree or higher
63%
NC
▲ vs NC · NC 36%
Poverty rate
10%
NC
▼ vs NC · NC 13%
Homeownership
53%
NC
▼ vs NC · NC 67%
Unemployment
3.5%
NC
▼ vs NC · NC 4.7%
Uninsured rate
7%
NC
▼ vs NC · NC 10%
Top communities: Raleigh 66% · Cary 34% · Durham 0% · Apex 0%

Who registers vs. who votes

Each group's share of registered voters against its share of those who actually voted in 2024. About 150k voters are registered here; 113,402 voted in 2024.

White
73%
78%
Black
13%
10%
Hispanic
4.7%
3.9%
Asian
4.1%
3.9%
American Indian
0.2%
0.2%
Other
5.0%
3.8%
Registered (2024)Voted (2024)
Voter race and ethnicity are self-reported at registration; voters without a designation (9% here) are excluded from the voted-side shares. Source: NCSBE voter file, 2024.

How this seat has moved

Actual result (solid)MRPI composite (dashed)Shaded = midterm
Hollow points are estimates, not measured results: 2024 uncontested (100% estimated) - no major-party opponent, so the value shown is the district’s underlying partisanship, not an election result. See Methodology.

How far this district swings

Across these cycles the Democratic share of the two-party vote here has ranged from 66% to 68%.

Precinct detail

46 precincts.

About this seat

SD-16 is rated Likely D from its 2024 partisan baseline of D+33.5. Districts this far from even are not competitive in a typical cycle - the outcome tracks the district’s underlying partisanship rather than individual campaigns. Democrats have gained 1.8 points of vote share here since 2018, moving the seat’s two-way margin 3.6 points their way.

Campaign money

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Adcock (D) $28K cash$0 cash Hensley (R)
Adcock has a committee on file; Hensley has no machine-readable figures (nothing filed yet, or filed on paper). Raised this cycle: Adcock $146K / Hensley $0.
Actual legislative results, observed except where marked · NCSBE 2018–2024 · boundaries: Redistricting Data Hub (redistrictingdatahub.org) · demographics: Census ACS 2020–2024 · voter file: NCSBE
Data as of October 29, 2026 · campaign finance last refreshed August 20, 2026
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