What are your chances of winning a lottery jackpot in North Carolina? Here are the odds

Evan Moore
·2 min read

The chances of winning the lottery -- at least for most -- are low.

You have a better chance of becoming President of the United States, scoring a hole-in-one, or winning a gold medal at the Olympics than winning a lottery jackpot.

But the prospect of getting rich overnight is often too tempting to pass up.

Since the start of the year, North Carolina residents have claimed more than $8 million in prizes from lottery drawings.

The North Carolina Education Lottery offers six contests, with jackpots ranging from $500 to millions, but the odds of winning each prize vary.

However, what are your actual chances to win a prize?

Odds of winning the lottery in NC

Lottery players in North Carolina have the best odds of winning the Carolina Pick 3 contest, with a 1 in 1,000 chance of selecting three numbers in the order they are drawn to win $500, according to the N.C. Education Lottery.

Carolina Pick 4, where players must select four numbers in the order they are drawn, has the next best odds, with a 1 in 10,000 chance of claiming the $5,000 jackpot.

Your odds of winning any other state lottery are significantly lower, but the rewards are much greater.

In the Carolina Cash 5 contest, players can win the jackpot by matching all five numbers that are drawn, in any order. However, the odds of doing that are 1 in 962,598.

The chances of winning the jackpot in the Lucky for Life drawing, where players can receive $1,000 per day for the rest of their lives, are 1 in 30,821,472.

In order to win the North Carolina Powerball jackpot, you’ll need to beat 292,201,338-to-one odds to win the top prize.

For North Carolina Mega Millions – the contest with the worst odds to win – you have a one in 302,575,350 of claiming the jackpot.

Past lottery winners from NC

Six people from North Carolina have claimed the top Powerball Prize since 2003, according to Powerball.net. The most recent winner claimed a prize worth nearly $355 million in 2019.

Just two winning Mega Millions have come from North Carolina since 2002, with the most recent one, worth $56.5 million, occurring in 2011, according to MegaMillions.com.