President Trump is battling to repeat his 2016 victory in North Carolina, a critical state where he is slightly behind, surveys show.
Trump visited the state for a campaign event on Tuesday, one of more than half a dozen trips that he, Vice President Mike Pence, and campaign surrogates, including son Eric Trump, have made there over the last few weeks.
In remarks, Trump pointed to his administration’s tax cuts and deregulatory action as drivers of the state’s economic success, notably in manufacturing.
A statement issued by the Trump campaign pointed to the administration’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade deal and claimed that while Democratic nominee Joe Biden was in the White House under President Barack Obama, North Carolina lost 13,200 manufacturing jobs.
Biden leads Trump by 1.5 percentage points in the key state, according to a RealClearPolitics average of recent polls.
Included in this average is a CNBC poll published on Wednesday that showed Biden leading Trump by a 2-point margin in the battleground, at 49% to 47%. The survey, which polled 4,143 likely voters between Sept. 4-6, had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.
The Trump campaign launched a radio ad this week featuring Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker and Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones, a Democrat, targeting black voters in North Carolina. The commercials have begun airing there as part of a multistate ad buy.
Exit polls in the state in 2016 identified 3 out of 10 voters as nonwhite. With 63% of the white vote, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 31 points in this demographic, a smaller margin than in either Georgia or Texas, where he won white voters by 54 points and 43 points, respectively.
Walker and Jones, who are both black, each addressed the Republican National Convention in August.
Pro-Trump super PAC America First Action announced a $9.7 million September broadcast, digital, and cable ad buy targeting Biden in North Carolina media markets.
In 2008, Obama became the first Democrat to win North Carolina in 32 years. In 2012, he lost the state while winning reelection.
The state is heavily divided, and until 2010, Democrats controlled the legislature and, therefore, drew the district maps that kept Republicans locked out.
Democrats have held the governor’s office all but four of the last 100 years, when Republican Pat McCrory became the 74th governor from 2013-2017.
While Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is at odds with a Republican legislature, limiting his power, he remains well placed for reelection polling ahead of his Republican opponent Dan Forest by an average of 17 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics.
