Many miles east of Charlotte, on North Carolina’s Highway 64, churches beckon drivers with offers of deliverance. “Are you sure you’re saved?” one sign says.
The air smells of lumber and barbecue smoke. Fields of tobacco grow in neat rows beside rolling hills.
Signs for Donald Trump have been planted at the sides of roads like welcome mats, greeting visitors at the entrances of one small town after another.
This is the rural territory where Democrats are fighting to make inroads in North Carolina, a state where a win by Vice President Kamala Harris in November could open a crucial pathway to victory.
It won’t be easy. Of all the battleground states, few have proved as elusive to Democrats running for president over the past decade as North Carolina. Barack Obama won the state in 2008. No Democratic presidential candidate has captured it since.
Mr. Trump notched his narrowest margin of victory in North Carolina in 2020, and this year, local Democrats believe they can win. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who expanded Medicaid, is popular. Republicans in the state are steeping in extremism and last year overrode Mr. Cooper’s veto to enact a 12-week abortion ban.