The North Carolina United States Senate election of 1984 was held on 6 November 1984 as part of the nationwide elections to the Senate, and coinciding with the 1984 presidential election. The election was fought between the Republican incumbent Jesse Helms and serving DemocraticGovernorJim Hunt. Helms won the election, the most expensive non-presidential election in United States history up to that point, by a margin significantly reduced from that that Helms achieved in 1978.
Primaries
Republican primary
1984 North Carolina U.S. Senate Republican primary election[1]
Hunt had a commanding lead in opinion polls for much of the campaign, with one poll in 1983 putting him nineteen points clear of Helms.[2] However, that was changed by the most bitterly contested election in the country that year,[2] Hunt ran a campaign ad connecting Helms to death squads in El Salvador through his association with the Nationalist Republican Alliance, for whom Roberto d'Aubuisson had recently run for the President of El Salvador.[2] In the short time before election day, however, the highly popular incumbent US President Ronald Reagan gave Helms a significant boost[3] by campaigning for him and running a local TV ad praising Helms and asking registered voters in North Carolina to re-elect him.[4]
The election cost a total of $26,379,483 in total reported spending (over twelve times as much as the 1980 race), of which, 64% ($16.9m) was spent by Helms.[5]
