Kay Hagan has had a persistent lead, although one that has been shrinking. A couple of things are going on here. One is that North Carolina isn’t a red state like, say, Arkansas. It’s more like Virginia. The presidential races in 2008 and 2012 were fought to near-draws, with Obama winning in 2008 and Romney in 2012.

Another is that Thom Tillis is speaker of the house in North Carolina, which has allowed Hagan to make the race about state issues rather than her vulnerable federal record.

But mostly what has happened is that the Democrats have been spending Tillis into the ground. Early on, Democrats figured that North Carolina would be their firewall for Senate control, not realizing how shaky they’d be in Colorado and Iowa. So they invested heavily. The projections I’ve seen show Democrats outspending Republicans by $6 million between September 1 and Election Day. There was an anti-Tillis ad barrage around Labor Day that was withering. You can see what happened in the RCP poll tracker in early September here.

Now, Tillis is still in this thing. The issue of Hagan’s missed hearings — Andrew notes the latest below — cuts, and Tillis will be hitting national security in the final weeks. But it would be nice if Republicans donors and outside groups could even up the score on the spending front.