Barack Obama, North Carolina | featured news

Mitt Romney is showing confidence about his standing in North Carolina and shifting campaign staff to other battleground states. "With the increasingly widening polls in North Carolina, we will continue to allocate resources, including key senior staff, to other states," Romney spokesman Michael Levoff told The News & Observer in Raleigh.

President Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention has been moved indoors, aides said, because of concerns over threatening storms in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday.

"We've had the old Romney-Ryan plan before - the top-down, give wealthier folks more tax breaks and somehow that's going to trickle down - it didn't work, it led to this economic disaster that the president inherited. We tried that, it failed, the Obama plan is much better for North Carolina," Dem. Rep. Jennifer Weiss, of Wake County, said.

Democratic President Barack Obama holds a narrow lead over Republican Mitt Romney in North Carolina, according to a new poll. Obama has a 49-46 percent lead over Romney, according to a survey by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm based in Raleigh. The lead is within the margin of error.

In a campaign fast growing nasty, the Republican National Committee is trying a gentler approach... Several Republicans who weren't involved in making the ad say a softer approach may be essential to the effort to defeat Obama in November, given polls showing him with strong personal favorability ratings. The ad is airing in Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa.

President Obama would like to carry North Carolina again, but he's having trouble with a couple of House Democrats in the Tar Heel State. U.S. Reps. Larry Kissell and Mike McIntyre -- both of whom represent rural districts with more Republican voters after redistricting -- have declined to endorse Obama for re-election.

While nationally the two rivals are locked in a dead heat, in 12 expected battleground states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin — Obama leads by eight points in the survey.

President Obama, Republican challenger Mitt Romney, and their allies have already spent $87 million on TV ads, the Associated Press reports -- most of it in nine battleground states. They are, not surprisingly, nine toss-up states that will likely decide the election: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire.

An Ohio man was charged after authorities spotted him with a gun in a North Carolina airport parking lot as Air Force One was departing Sunday afternoon.

President Barack Obama, hitting the road for healthcare reform again today, will take his case to two red states that he turned blue last year: North Carolina and Virginia.