If this is the final margin, holding the other seat will be an uphill battle for Republicans in 2022 even in a Republican-leaning year. Unless polling is off substantially (possible), this state appears to have zoomed leftward way more than I would have expected.
This does not necessarily mean the state has zoomed leftward considering it comes with a presidential race currently sitting (according to this pollster) at 50-48 in a wave environment. Maybe Democrats are just going to be afforded more downballot support in the longterm because of ancestral Trump Democrats (although we've seen how that story tends to go in other states), but the most probable explanation is just that Tillis is a bad candidate and shouldn't run in 2022.
