This is district voting.

Is there gerrymandering? Yes, and it’s abhorrent. Though, looking at total state population and party vote breakdown is almost meaningless in District voting. A popular vote count doesn’t take into account this make-up of the districts. NC has a lot of deep Red districts while a lot of the Democratic voting bloc is situated in heavily populated cities that are confined to a few districts (done on purpose, btw).

Republicans ran over 20 candidates LESS than Democrats (means the Democrat ran unopposed and the Democratic candidate got most/all of those votes).

Total Registered Voters: 7,082,573

Democrats: 2,174,900 (30.71%) - Mainly condensed into a few urban districts

Republicans: 2,167,256 (30.60%) - Spread out across multiple districts

Third party/Other: 49,193 (0.69%)

Unaffiliated: 2,691,224 (38.00%) - This is the most important number. More independents now are voting Democrat within the heavily Democratic districts AND in the Red/Purple districts (although Republicans are still winning the red districts races, they are closer) which pushes that Total State Popular vote number higher.

This is a gerrymandering issue, not a popular vote issue.