The Senate race in North Carolina between Republican state-house speaker Thom Tillis and Democratic senator Kay Hagan is already the most expensive of all time. Democrats and left-leaning outside groups from the League of Conservation Voters to Planned Parenthood and EMILY’s List have poured a tremendous amount of money into the race to protect Hagan.

Initially, Democrats were hugely outspending Republicans. They were able to define Tillis as the leader, along with North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, of a conservative movement in North Carolina that, with control of every branch of government, has dragged the state to the right. They said he slashed education funding and curtailed access to abortion. Those issues and many of the initiatives spearheaded by McCrory and Tillis have for the past few years energized the Left in North Carolina: protesters emerged each Monday in a movement known as “Moral Mondays” that drew national attention and invigorated liberals far and wide.

“We were losing for a very long time,” says a national Republican official. Indeed, the Tillis campaign’s chief strategist, Paul Shumaker, told donors last week that an internal poll for the first time has Tillis tied with Hagan: Even in usually favorable internal polls, he’s never led. National Republicans are putting a positive spin on all of this. They are saying that, having brought the race to a dead heat with a handful of days to go, Tillis has the momentum.

Several Republicans have noted that while Democrats succeeded in defining Tillis early, they failed to boost Hagan. Her approval rating has languished around 42 percent throughout the election. So, they say, when news hit that she skipped a committee hearing on the Islamic State to attend a New York fundraiser, followed by the revelation that her husband and son may have benefited from the 2009 stimulus bill, it took a toll.

Mitt Romney won the Tar Heel State by two points; Pat McCrory, who won the same year, was the first Republican governor elected in two decades. Electing McCrory was a top priority for the GOP, and he won by twelve points. Tillis told donors that, if he wins, the margin of victory will be closer to Romney’s, saying he’d be “shocked if the margin of victory is more than a couple of percentage points.”