About twenty years ago, in the early 2000s, Paul Shumaker’s party began to experience a disturbing trend.

Shumaker, a Republican operative with a classic Carolinian accent, explained to Al Jazeera in stark terms: Republican registration began to decline, while the number of “unaffiliated” voters gradually rose.

“Now there are no more liberal Republicans, and less moderate Republicans,” Shumaker said.

He shared data showing that both major parties, Republicans and Democrats, have invested a total of more than $147 million in the state over the past decade — but even that could spark an “explosion” of unaffiliated voters, who now clear majority.

Of North Carolina’s 8.5 million voters this year, about 38 percent are registered as “unaffiliated.” That dwarfs the 32 percent who identify as Democrat and the 30 percent who say they are Republican.

This explosion of “unaffiliated” voters aligns with larger demographic trends showing Americans resisting traditional party labels, contributing to the unpredictability of elections.

However, that does not mean that “unaffiliated” voters will choose a third-party candidate. Polls have shown that the majority of independent voters, in fact, consistently “lean” toward the Republican side or the Democrats.

This means that they are very much up for grabs – and in demand – by the two major parties.

“Neither party can win without building a coalition for unaffiliated voters,” Shumaker said.

Republicans, he explained, must appeal to unaffiliated voters in the suburbs and cities — two areas where Democrats are expected to win.

Democrats, meanwhile, hope to use “unaffiliated” voters to offset losses in their base. More than 2.4 million people in North Carolina registered as Democrats as of Oct. 26 — up from more than 2.6 million around the same point in the 2020 election cycle.

Party strategists like Jackson hope to make up for the loss by appealing to voters in left-wing strongholds — typically urban centers — while holding out in rural areas.

After all, North Carolina has the largest rural population in the US after Texas.

“People often say you need to lose less in rural areas, but that’s not true, you just need to stop the bleeding,” Jackson said. “If Kamala Harris maintains (outgoing President) Joe Biden’s margins, she could have a shot.”

Mac McCorkle, a Democratic political consultant with an upbeat, amiable demeanor, calls unaffiliated voters “precious” to his party. He believes only a small number of voters will decide whether North Carolina supports Harris or Trump.

“It’s not like 20 percent of the electorate can go either way,” he said. “We’re talking about a race that will be decided by one, two, three percent.”