Petition for Recognition as Political Party

Overview

View the criteria to be recognized as a political party in North Carolina below, and refer to Fact Sheet: 2025-26 New Political Party Petitions (PDF) for more information.

Criteria To Be Recognized

Per “Political party” defined; creation of new party (N.C.G.S. § 163-96), to be recognized as a political party in North Carolina, one of the following criteria must be met:

  1. Any group of voters whose candidate for governor or for presidential electors received at least 2% of the entire vote cast in the state in the most recent general election for that contest.
  2. Any group of voters which files with the State Board of Elections signatures of at least 0.25% of all registered N.C. voters who voted in the most recent election for N.C. governor, with at least 200 registered voters from each of 3 N.C. congressional districts. The petitions must be filed with the State Board of Elections before noon on June 1 of the year of the election that the party wishes to participate in. Petitions for the creation of a new political party must use the statutory language found in (b). For the county boards of elections to have enough time to properly review signatures, petitions must be submitted to the counties for verification no later than 15 days before they are due to the State Board of Elections (c).
  3. Any group of voters which files with the State Board of Elections documentation that the group of voters had a candidate nominated on the general election ballot in at least 70 percent of the states (35 states) in the most recent presidential election. To be effective, the group must file their documentation with the State Board of Elections before noon on June 1 of the year of the election that party wishes to participate in.

As required by § 163-96(b), the organizers and petition circulators for the new party are required to inform the signers of the petition of the general purpose and intent of the new party. Once an organizer has collected enough signatures, the State Board will determine the sufficiency of the petition, and part of its consideration will be whether the organizers and petition circulators met that statutory requirement. Organizers may submit documentation (e.g., a script that organizers will use when collecting signatures) showing compliance with the statutory requirement when submitting a petition request form, at the time they submit the petition signatures to the State Board, or any point in between then.

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