By james art 
North Carolina has landed on the Republican side of presidential elections for most of the past five decades. But this year, state is a real battle.
Both the Harris and Trump campaigns have invested heavily in the state — and the candidates are holding multiple events in the state on Saturday.
Donald Trump held a rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, this afternoon, home to about 80,000 people on the outskirts of Charlotte, the state’s largest city.
Tonight, Trump will hold another rally in Greensboro, the state’s third-largest city and home to its historic textile and furniture industries.
He is due to return to the state again on Sunday and Monday – although he is also scheduled to visit other swing states that day.
After a Saturday afternoon rally in Atlanta, Harris traveled to Charlotte for an event along with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Khalid.
The state has plagued Democrats for years
When Barack Obama won it in 2008, it was the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had done so since 1976. Despite much attention from his re-election campaign, Obama narrowly lost the state in 2012.
Trump carried the state by three percentage points in 2016 and by a point and a half in 2020 — but changing demographics could boost Harris’ chances here.
There has been rapid growth over the past 20 years in the so-called Research Triangle, home to NC State University, Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, leading to an increase in the state’s population of college-educated voters — who are more likely to be supporters of Harris.
There has also been a sharp increase in the Hispanic and Asian American population, and about 1 in 5 voters is black.
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But Republicans have a big advantage with white voters without a college degree and have also focused on getting the word out in parts of the state hit hard by Hurricane Helena, many of which were conservative communities.
Trump won 52 percent of the vote in counties designated by FEMA as eligible for aid under the updated disaster declaration, according to an NPR analysis. And when heavily Democratic Mecklenburg County is excluded, Trump won 63 percent of the disaster counties.
Completely different closing arguments
In her final days on the trail, Vice President Harris plans to focus on the specific things she hopes to do to improve the lives of Americans from all walks of life, according to her campaign officials.
That’s the theme of a two-minute television commercial scheduled to air during Sunday’s NFL football games, including the game between the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions. The campaign says it hopes to reach people who are less likely to vote, who may not have made up their minds about the candidates.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’ campaign chairman, told reporters she felt optimistic that undecided voters had turned to Harris in the final days of the campaign.
“We still know there are some left, and we want to make sure we’re the last people voters hear before they go to the polls,” O’Malley Dillon said.
In contrast, Trump focused squarely on economic tariffs, immigrants — and Harris herself.
On a Saturday post on your Truth Social platformTrump said his opponent was “slumping toward the finish line yawning and screaming and giggling,” calling Harris a “low IQ individual.”
At his afternoon rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, Trump repeated his calls for the death penalty for any migrant who kills an American citizen or law enforcement officer.
Trump also spent several minutes defending his claim that he will protect women “whether women like it or not.”
“What I’m doing is very controversial. I don’t care. I’m doing the right thing,” Trump said. “I want to protect the women, I want to protect our men, I want to protect the children. I want to protect everybody.”
He said he asked a previous rally crowd about the remark: “Is there a woman who would be offended by the fact that I said, ‘I will protect you as your president’?”
Trump said no one raised their hand, and later said a woman raised her hand. He joked — sharing booed comments from rally attendees — that it could have been Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, or “a woman who has changed.”
NPR’s Sarah McCammon contributed to this report from Gastonia, North Carolina
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