With less than 70 days left until the general election, the stakes are high for both candidates as they wrangle over a newly crowned swing state: North Carolina.

"It's a must win for the [Sen. John] McCain campaign. Republicans in today's politics look to the South as an essential base of their national coalition," said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "But the burden is on [Sen. Barack] Obama to change the dynamics of this state. All McCain has to do is maintain the status quo."

No Democrat has been able to take the state's 15 electoral votes since former president Jimmy Carter defeated then-incumbent president Gerald Ford in 1976 in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Neither party had aggressively campaigned in North Carolina since 1992 when former president George Bush narrowly defeated former president Bill Clinton in the state. In 2004, President George W. Bush trounced Sen. John Kerry by 12 percentage points in the state.

Political pundits and representatives for both campaigns, however, acknowledged that this year will be different.

"This is going to be a competitive election cycle. We were under no illusions going into it that it wasn't," said Brent Woodcox, communications director for the North Carolina Republican Party. "But it has been 1976 since the Democrats won, and we think we're going to continue that trend."

The changing demographics of the state-with increasing numbers of black residents and blue-collar workers-make a Democratic North Carolina less far-fetched than it once may have seemed.

An August poll by SurveyUSA found McCain leading Obama by four points, 49 percent to 45 percent. The same survey conducted in May found McCain ahead by eight points. But polls that have gotten more press than SurveyUSA, like Rasmussen and Public Policy Polling, have been less conclusive regarding such a trend, showing McCain increasing his lead in the state in recent months.

"North Carolina is not going to be a cake walk, and we are marshalling our volunteer efforts toward a win in North Carolina," said Paul Cox, deputy communications director for the North Carolina Obama campaign. "2008 is not like 2004. Bush did win this state but the vast majority are fed up with his policies. McCain is offering up the same policies. We have a real opening here to succeed in North Carolina."

Further evidence of the unusually intense fight being waged can been seen in the considerable resources both candidates have poured into the state.

Obama has set up 15 offices in the state, with another seven slated to open within the coming weeks. Republicans have similarly opened nine joint "Victory Offices" in North Carolina to coordinate the campaigns of McCain, N.C. Senator Elizabeth Dole and gubernatorial hopeful Pat McCrory.

Their efforts have resulted in nearly 20,000 new voters added to the Republican voter roll, compared to the 160,000 new Democrats registered for the cycle, representatives for the Obama campaign said. Further, the Obama campaign has spent $2 million on television advertisements in North Carolina during June and July, one of 18 states it has targeted for such advertising. On the other hand, the McCain campaign has aired national ads during the Olympic Games but has thus far not targeted the N.C. television market specifically.

Guillory said no matter what the outcomes of this year's races are, contentious elections will most likely be the norm in North Carolina in the years to come.

"The state now has a two-party system that it did not have in the time of the solidly Democratic South [until the 1960's]," he said. "We're going to remain a competitive state in the next presidential elections even if Obama does win this year."