The 2018 Miss North Carolina USA competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state North Carolina in the Miss USA pageant. This state is part of the RPM Productions group.
In 2005, Miss North Carolina USA Chelsea Cooley won the Miss USA crown and placed in the top 10 at Miss Universe. Cooley is the first former Miss North Carolina Teen USA to win the Miss title, although not the first to have competed at Miss Teen USA. The second Miss North Carolina Teen USA to win the Miss title was Erin O'Kelley in 2007. She went on to place in the top 15 at Miss USA 2007. Similar to the Miss Utah USA titleholders, both Cooley and Kelley placed at Miss USA, eclipsing their teen performances. In 2009, Kristen Dalton became the second woman from North Carolina to be crowned Miss USA.
Every year, each state holds a preliminary competition to choose their delegate for the Miss USA pageant. In some states (such as Texas and Florida), local pageants are also held to determine delegates for the state competition. The state winners hold the title "Miss State USA" for the year of their reign.
The most successful state is Texas, which has had the most semi-finalists and winners, including five consecutive Miss USA titleholders during the 1980s.[22] Other successful states include California, New York, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. The least successful states are Delaware, placing only once in 2015; Montana, which has not placed since the 1950s; South Dakota, which has only placed three times (the last time in 2016), and Wyoming, which gained only its second placement in 2010. The only state which has produced more than one Miss Universe is South Carolina.
The Miss Universe Organization licenses out the state pageants to pageant directors, who in some cases are responsible for more than one state. The most well established directorial groups are RPM Productions, created in 1980 (Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina), and Vanbros, created in the early 1990s (Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma). Future Productions direct the most states, seven, across the Midwest and Rockies.