North Carolina

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The governor’s mansion in Raleigh was the biggest prize of the 11 races for governor this year, and Pat McCrory, a Republican, won it handily, beating Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, a Democrat. Mr. McCrory’s win ended two decades of Democratic control of the governor’s office and signaled a return to red across much of North Carolina; the state swung blue for President Obama in 2008.

President Obama failed to replicate his 2008 win in the state, which became the only swing state to hand its electoral votes to Mitt Romney.

Aides to Mr. Romney felt so good about his chances in the state that they pared his presidential campaign’s operations there in late October, saying they were confident of winning and would do better to deploy crucial staff members and cash to other places.

Almost a quarter of the state’s population is black, and while exit polls showed that black voters turned out and cast their votes for President Obama by a margin of more than 7 to 1, that was not enough to win the state for him.

The Republicans also picked up at least three House seats in North Carolina, thanks to redistricting that altered constituencies so significantly that some incumbents simply walked away and others were all but forced to disavow the Democratic Party to have any hope of hanging on to their seats.

The Democrats lost the 13th District, which stretches along the center of the northern state line and dips down to include the area around Wake Forest. Representative Brad Miller, a Democrat, threw in the towel, and the party had trouble mounting a strong challenge to George E. B. Holding, the Republican United States attorney who pressed charges of violating federal campaign finance laws against John Edwards, the former senator and vice-presidential candidate.

Mr. Holding easily defeated Charles Malone, a Democrat and state employee in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

District 11, which covers the western wedge of the state, was also up for grabs after the retirement of Heath Shuler, a Democrat who barely held onto it in the last two elections. Voters gave the seat to Mark Meadows, a Republican real estate developer, who defeated Mr. Shuler’s former chief of staff, Hayden Rogers.

Mr. Rogers and the endangered Democratic incumbents Larry Kissell of the Eighth District and Mike McIntyre of the Seventh District had essentially run against their party, declining to go to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte and doing everything possible to distance themselves from the president.

It was not enough to save Mr. Kissell, who lost his seat to Richard Hudson, a Republican. Mr. McIntyre was heading for a recount with just a few hundred votes separating him from David Rouzer, the Republican challenger.