NC helped elect Donald Trump, but this time a changing state may change its mind.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s last campaign stop was in Raleigh for a raucous late-night rally at N.C. State’s Reynolds Coliseum. That Clinton chose to close her campaign in North Carolina seems to reflect the fatal miscalculations of her supposedly data-driven campaign. The Democratic presidential nominee never went to Wisconsin – a crucial state she lost by less than 1 percent. Instead she spent her campaign’s last hours appealing to voters in a state she lost by more than 3 percent.

But Clinton’s error may have been more a matter of timing than of counting. She and her pollsters saw a state once reliably Republican in presidential races trending toward Democrats. Yet, even as she stumped in North Carolina as late as possible, she may still have been too early.

Four years later these trends – increasing urbanization, more newcomers from outside the South and a rising minority population – point toward a once red, then purple state turning bluer. Barack Obama won the state narrowly in 2008, the first time North Carolina went for a Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter in 1976, but it went back to the Republican column in 2012, favoring Mitt Romney over Obama.

Since 2016, much has changed. More than 1 million people are newly registered to vote – 61 percent of them younger than 30. The number includes people moving into the state, young people turning 18 and residents registering to vote for the first time. Compared to late August 2016, the state’s total of registered voters has climbed by almost 400,000.

David McLennan, a political science professor who directs the Meredith Poll at Meredith College in Raleigh, expects the presidential race to be typically close in North Carolina, but the electorate will be notably different than it was in 2016.

“The most obvious difference is the number of new voters – 1.1 million,” he said. “They are less partisan, they are browner and they are younger.”

That change could mean the difference. Polling averages compiled by the website FiveThirtyEight show Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Trump virtually tied.

Chris Cooper, who heads the Department of Political Science and Public Affairs at Western Carolina University, said North Carolina’s increasing diversity and the effects of the pandemic will work against the president this time around.

“The electorate is different, more suburban and urban, slightly more diverse and more mobile. And the mood is different,” Cooper said. “In a second-term election, people are going to vote on ‘Am I better off than I was four years ago?’ And clearly that’s a tougher question for Donald Trump to answer right now.”

While the state’s changing demographics will have even greater weight, both McLennan and Cooper said other elements will also matter. Democrats will need a strong turnout by Black voters and young voters. Republican candidates will benefit if COVID-19 concerns reduce turnout and Trump’s dire warnings about urban unrest and threats to the suburbs take hold.

Republicans chose Charlotte as the site of their 2020 national convention because North Carolina was seen as a Trump-leaning state and one that is crucial to his re-election. But Trump is returning to a state that has drifted left – with a push from the conservative policies of the Republican-led General Assembly.

One thing, though, is the same. The way the choice in 2020 is being defined. Clinton framed it at her last rally much as Biden did as he accepted his party’s nomination. She said, “We don’t have to accept a dark and divisive vision for America. Tomorrow you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America.”

That message went unheeded in 2016, but it could resonate louder in today’s North Carolina.