It’s officially anybody’s game in North Carolina, a key battleground state.
The Tar Heel state is looking at a “toss up” between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, according to the Cook Political Report out Tuesday—a change from its previous “leaning Republican” status.
It’s not clear that Harris is picking up any Trump voters, moreso that she is shoring up support among Democratic and Independent voters, gaining 13 points with each group.
Across the board, it seems that North Carolina is slipping further out of the grasp of Republicans. Sabato’s Crystal Ball has also recently updated its rating of North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, from “toss-up” to “leaning Democratic,” signaling a slight shift in the race for Josh Stein over Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, the MAGA acolyte who once proclaimed that “some folks need killing!”
The Trump team has been forced to play defense in North Carolina, which the former president won by an extremely thin margin of 1.34 percent in 2020. Since Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Trump has made three campaign stops in North Carolina. Earlier this month, Trump appeared at a messaging event in Asheville, which predictably devolved into his usual word salad and ad hominem attacks against Harris. In Asheboro, Trump repeatedly complained about his team’s desperate attempts to keep him on topic.
Harris debuted her economic agenda at an invite-only rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, and another event was canceled due to inclement weather. That trip was her eighth visit to the state in a year, having visited twice previously as part of Biden’s campaign.
