Photo finish predicted for Trump, Clinton in North Carolina

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are clawing for every vote in North Carolina, as election experts forecast another photo finish in one of the nation’s premier battleground states. 

The police shooting of a black man Tuesday that sparked protests in Charlotte has thrust North Carolina into the national spotlight as the candidates and their campaigns blanket the state in the final 46-day push before the presidential election. 

{mosads}The Republican National Committee (RNC), which is essentially acting as a stand-in for Trump’s campaign, has nearly tripled its ground forces in the state, from 61 paid staffers in 2012 to 172 presently. That’s easily the RNC’s largest percentage increase of staff in any battleground state. 

The Clinton campaign has countered with 30 field offices and claims it has contacted some 300,000 North Carolinians with its army of 40,000 volunteers. 

Trump hit the ground there this week with rallies in High Point and Kenansville as he focuses on the rural towns where he needs to outperform the Democratic nominee. Clinton, meanwhile, has made stops in the urban centers of Charlotte and Greensboro over the last two weeks. 

North Carolina is a traditionally red state and has gone for the Republican presidential nominee in eight of the last nine elections. 

But shifting demographics have put the state in play for Democrats, giving Clinton the opportunity to slam the door shut on Trump if she can pull out a victory there. 

Polls of North Carolina show Trump, the GOP nominee, and Clinton are tied.

The Tar Heel State has been one of the closest states in the country in the last two presidential elections, with President Obama carrying it by 0.3 percentage points in 2008 and Mitt Romney returning it to the Republican column in 2012 with a 2-point victory. 

“We’re very split,” said Gary Pearce, a veteran Democratic operative in the state. “North Carolina is a bitterly polarized state politically.” 

The stakes are especially high for Trump. 

The GOP nominee needs to win all of the states that Romney carried in 2012 — that includes North Carolina — plus a handful of battleground states that Obama won in both 2008 and 2012 if he’s going to win the White House. 

While the Trump campaign is getting swamped in the advertising game elsewhere, North Carolina is one of the few battleground states where it’s been on the air since August. 

Still, Clinton and her deep-pocketed allies — the colossal super PAC Priorities USA among them — are flooding the state with ads targeting the black voters and young people who delivered the state to Obama by an ultra-thin margin in 2008. 

“It’s going to be close,” said Carter Wrenn, a veteran GOP operative in the state. “It’s hard to see a path to victory for Trump without North Carolina.” 

North Carolina has received an influx of young, liberal-leaning, college-educated professionals who are drawn to the state’s booming banking, technology and pharmaceutical industries. 

The voting population has swelled from 3.3 million in the early 1990s to 6.6 million presently.  

Only about half of voters are native to the state, with many having matriculated from liberal bastions of high-tech and finance markets and universities. 

Those new voters turned out in 2008 along with a record number of black voters to propel Obama to victory. It was the first time a Democrat had carried the state in 24 years. 

The Obamas could be the Clinton campaign’s secret weapon in North Carolina as Clinton grapples with an enthusiasm gap that threatens to dampen turnout. 

Obama’s first appearance for Clinton this year was in Charlotte, and the campaign is running digital ads featuring first lady Michelle Obama in the state. 

A White House official told The Hill the president will be dispatched to the trail for one or two days a week to provide “an extra boost” for specific constituencies — African-Americans and young voters among them — to ensure they “remember what is at stake.” 

And Trump’s weakness among women, coupled with the first woman to be at the head of a major-party ticket, could also sink him in the state. Women make up 54 percent of the electorate and cast half a million more ballots than men in North Carolina in 2012. 

Nonpartisan political analyst John Davis said that there have been 45 male vs. female statewide elections in North Carolina since 2000. Women have won 75 percent of those.

But there are advantages for Trump as well. 

Polls show Democrats are not enthusiastic about Clinton’s candidacy, and it remains to be seen whether black voters — whose turnout leaped by more than 20 percent with Obama on the ticket — will hit the polls when he’s not on the ticket. 

And the demographics have not completely moved away from Republicans in North Carolina in the same way they have in other battleground states.

Davis described two distinct North Carolinas, where half the population lives in the traditional rural areas that make up 87 of the state’s counties, and the other half is concentrated in the 13 counties that encompass the major cities. 

About 40 percent of voters in North Carolina identify as Democrats, with 30 percent saying they’re Republicans and 30 percent calling themselves independents or unaffiliated. 

The older Democrats living in rural areas lean conservative and aren’t above voting Republican, said Wrenn, meaning that about one-third of the voting population are “pure ticket-splitters” in a given election. 

“We’ve become the most perfectly balanced swing state in the nation,” said Davis. 

And there is down-ballot intrigue that could have an impact on the top of the ticket. 

North Carolina played host to the most expensive Senate race of the 2014 cycle, with then-state Rep. Thom Tillis (R) knocking off incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan (D) in a battle that cost $114 million. 

Outside cash is once again sloshing around in the Senate fight between incumbent Sen. Richard Burr (R) and Democrat Deborah Ross. A Public Policy Polling survey released Wednesday found the candidates tied at 41 percent. 

And the state’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, is fighting for his political life against Democrat Roy Cooper after signing a controversial transgender bathroom bill that has provoked the NCAA and others to move some events out of the state in protest. 

Republicans think the issue has been overplayed by the national media and don’t believe it will be a factor in the election because the state’s economy is humming. 

But Democrats think the issue will drive younger voters to the polls, potentially providing a boost to Clinton. 

“McCrory led every poll until he signed that bill,” said Pearce. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see a reverse coattails effect that benefits Clinton.”