RALEIGH: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump squared off Thursday in do-or-die North Carolina with duelling rallies in the home stretch of a bitter, hard-fought US presidential race that is tightening by the day.
As the candidates jostle and joust for supremacy in the handful of battleground states that will decide the November 8 election, two of the biggest prizes on the electoral map, Florida and North Carolina, have narrowed into absolute dead heats, according to RealClearPolitics poll aggregates.
Democrat Clinton unleashed top surrogates including President Barack Obama to bolster her case in the election's homestretch, while billionaire Trump deployed wife Melania to soften the brash Republican's image.
North Carolina was suddenly in the eye of the political storm, with the candidates frantically criss-crossing the southeastern state where they are locked at 46.4 percent apiece.
In an increasingly cat-and-mouse game, their two motorcades even passed one another Thursday on the tarmac at the Raleigh-Durham airport ahead of their rival rallies.
"You've got to get everyone you know to come out and vote," Clinton implored supporters in Raleigh, joined by her onetime primary adversary Senator Bernie Sanders and "Happy" singer Pharrell Williams.
"The best way to repudiate the bigotry and the bluster and the bullying and the hateful rhetoric and discrimination is to show up with the biggest turnout in American history."
Obama shuttled into Florida for fiery rallies aimed at turning out the Democratic base for Clinton in a must-win state for Trump, who is under pressure to snatch battleground states and even poach one or two Democratic strongholds if he is to prevail.
A nationwide CBS/New York Times survey showed Clinton's lead shrinking to three points, at 45 percent against Trump's 42 percent, a sign the bombastic mogul is winning over once-wary Republican voters.
After months of vitriolic and turbulent campaigning, political tribalism appears to be returning to the fore in the deeply divided nation ahead of Election Day.
"This will be a close race and you cannot take it for granted," Obama warned supporters in Jacksonville, painting an apocalyptic vision of what Trump would mean for American democracy.
Clinton added to the portrayal, telling North Carolinians that "if Donald Trump were to win this election we would have a commander in chief who is completely out of his depth and whose ideas are incredibly dangerous."
Trump heads Friday to New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania, while Clinton stumps in Ohio and Michigan.
"I feel all fired up and ready to go for the next five days," Clinton said.
The Democrats' last stand will come in Philadelphia on the eve of the election for a joint rally binding America's two most powerful political dynasties.
She will be joined by husband Bill Clinton, President Obama and 2016's most potent campaigner, First Lady Michelle Obama.
Pennsylvania is clearly a firewall for Clinton; a Trump win there would be a giant step toward his becoming the 45th president.
But a rally in Philadelphia -- the City of Brotherly Love -- sends an unmistakable message: Trump is a threat to the republic.
It was here that the US Constitution came into being in 1787.
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