In the western mountains, wealthy coastal towns, and urban and rural areas in between, North Carolina voters agree on this: It has been an exhausting and unsettling final stretch of the election in their state. After a devastating hurricane and a jolting political scandal, they are ready for a result.
Over the final days of the presidential campaign, the biggest question hanging over the state is whether Democrats, who have won North Carolina’s electoral votes only twice in the past half-century, will again come up short.
Vice President Kamala Harris has forced former President Donald J. Trump to compete in North Carolina, which he almost certainly must win to take the White House, until the very end. Both candidates have visited frequently and plan to return in the last few days of their campaigns: Ms. Harris will be in Charlotte on Saturday, while Mr. Trump has rallies in Greensboro and Gastonia on Saturday, Kinston on Sunday, and Raleigh on Monday.
Democrats see this year as their best chance to claim the state since 2008, when Barack Obama won it with a 0.32 percent margin. Gov. Roy Cooper, a term-limited Democrat, has said in recent weeks that he has “that 2008 feeling,” pointing to the energy that Ms. Harris injected into the race after replacing President Biden on the ticket.
But Republicans have been quick to temper Democrats’ optimism, arguing that they still have the edge in a state where rural areas, and a critical mass of conservative-leaning suburbs and exurbs, remain reliably red.
The race for North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes remains incredibly close. The New York Times polling average shows Mr. Trump up by one point, well within the margin of error.
“It’s been frustrating to not know for months: Who are we as a state?” said Jerry Sholar, a 63-year-old carpenter in the coastal city of Wilmington. Mr. Sholar, a Republican, said he had rarely voted until Mr. Trump came along and reshaped American politics.
The tailwinds, Democrats argue, are theirs. Since 2020, when Mr. Trump won the state by 1.3 percentage points, North Carolina has grown by about 400,000 residents. Its suburbs have become more diverse. Record-breaking amounts of money have poured into the state to help Ms. Harris and other Democrats. The Harris campaign also has a strong presence on the ground, with 29 field offices and 350 staff members in the state.
Mr. Trump has not been helped by two extremist Republicans running for state office: Mark Robinson, the current lieutenant governor and Republican nominee for governor, has a well-documented history of inflammatory and offensive remarks. Michelle Morrow, the nominee for public schools superintendent, once called for executing Mr. Obama.
“If not now, when? I guess that would be the question for Democrats,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. “If they can’t, it would be the fourth time in a row that they are like Charlie Brown going to kick the football and coming up empty.”
Bolstered by reliable rural voters, Republicans believe Democrats will miss again. “Unless they have a statewide message, or a generational historic talent like Obama, Democrats ain’t gonna win in N.C.,” said Jonathan Felts, a Republican consultant.
The Democratic Party is hoping for impressive turnout from Black voters, women and young people. Nearly four million people have already cast ballots in the race. Democrats are hoping to use the final weekend of campaigning to overcome a slight underperformance so far from Black voters, according to state elections data. But Democratic operatives in North Carolina said on Friday that Black turnout numbers are on track with their own modeling.
There are promising signs of enthusiasm from Democratic base voters. Shantell Thomas, 52, of Durham, was wearing a full pink and green Alpha Kappa Alpha outfit at a rally for Ms. Harris this week in Raleigh, honoring the historically Black sorority that the vice president joined while at Howard University. Ms. Thomas believed the time to flip North Carolina had come.
“I pitch my tent in the land of hope,” Ms. Thomas said. Asked why, she pointed to the “AKA” letters on her jacket. “Because now, this candidate is our girl.”
Democrats have other bright spots, she said, such as Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general and Democratic nominee for governor, who is widely expected to win. The party also has a chance this year to break the Republican supermajority in the legislature, which last year banned most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
“The two competing narratives for North Carolina right now are either, one, North Carolina’s turning into Virginia, where we’re going to go blue,” said Blair Reeves, the executive director of Carolina Forward, a left-leaning policy organization. “Or, the other path is North Carolina is becoming Florida, where the type of people who are moving into North Carolina are turning it redder and redder.”
In places like New Hanover County, home to Wilmington, newer residents are a politically mixed bag. Standing in line to vote one recent breezy afternoon was Brad Shirley, 52, an independent who for months had been undecided about whom to support for president.
“You definitely feel the importance of it, for sure,” Mr. Shirley said of his state’s swing status, before stepping into a booth to cast his ballot for Mr. Trump, who he thought was stronger on immigration policy.
Republicans are relying not only on the roughly one-third of North Carolina voters who live in rural areas, but also on some fast-growing exurban counties that lean red, mostly near Charlotte and Raleigh, to run up their numbers.
Paul Shumaker, a veteran Republican strategist in Raleigh, said that voter registration numbers and strong early voting turnout among Republicans were promising signs for Mr. Trump.
Republicans have registered about 80,000 voters in the state since 2020, while Democrats have lost roughly 182,000 registered voters. Still, the number of voters unaffiliated with a party has grown by about 400,000 since 2020, and “that’s kind of throwing us into unknown territory,” said Michael Bitzer, an expert on North Carolina politics at Catawba College in Salisbury.
The fight for voters at the margins has come into full view in Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte — a blue city that has not voted blue enough in recent cycles to deliver the state for Democrats. The party has poured millions of dollars into its turnout operation there.
Early voting data has made some Democrats uneasy. Before marching with a group of more than 150 Black voters to a precinct at Charlotte’s Bank of America arena, the Rev. Dr. Monty Witherspoon, a school board member at large and senior pastor of Steele Creek A.M.E. Zion Church in Charlotte, said that lagging Black turnout was concerning. But Dr. Witherspoon said that he was confident the party would close the gap in the final days of early voting.
“There’s still some work to be done,” he said. “It’s time to call up our family members and friends and even just having conversations with strangers, people you don’t know, encouraging people to go vote.”
Governor Cooper said in an interview that the wide gap in early voting among women — with more Democrats showing up than Republicans — could be a hopeful sign for Ms. Harris. “I think that’s going to be a secret weapon for us,” he said.
In past elections, the North Carolina Republican Party did a better job mobilizing voters than Democrats, whose state party floundered after Republicans took control of the legislature in 2010. Now, leaders of the state Democratic Party say they have improved their strategy and that increased funding and manpower has helped them improve their turnout operation — one that will be tested on Election Day.
“So goes Charlotte, so goes North Carolina,” said U.S. Representative Alma Adams, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Mecklenburg County. “That’s why we’re really pushing here.”
Retaining the governor’s mansion and the attorney general’s office have been the only major success stories for the North Carolina Democratic Party in recent years.
On a stone terrace at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this week, college Democrats gathered for a rally for Mr. Stein that featured Governor Cooper. No one there doubted that Mr. Stein would win the governor’s race, including Jerome Mushi, a 20-year-old sophomore studying public policy, who grew up in red-leaning Alamance County, west of Raleigh.
How did he feel about Ms. Harris’s chances?
“We remain skeptical,” Mr. Mushi said. “But optimistic.”
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