Young voters key to swing North Carolina.

Though Donald Trump won North Carolina twice, 2020 was his narrowest victory in any state. He beat Joe Biden by 1.4 points, or around 75,000 votes. Seeing it as Mr. Biden's best pickup opportunity, the Biden campaign began targeting general election voters in the Tar Heel State during the primary with a $25 million TV ad campaign in seven battleground states that included North Carolina. Building a student coalition Clayton has been a key player in outreach to young voters, Biden officials said. "Every person that's leading a canvas right now in North Carolina is a young person," Clayton said. "Folks out there out on the doors right now in North Carolina are young people. In March, Clayton joined Vice President Kamala Harris in a "Students for Biden" coalition launch event in Durham. They helped train young North Carolinians on political organizing and Clayton says the state party is developing a pipeline that would hire eligible students for the campaign after they graduate "We want local North Carolina youth out there organizing for this campaign this year, because we fundamentally think that this is the way forward in our state," she said. Tarak Duggal, a senior at Wake Forest University, was one of the event's participants. "It is inspiring and helpful to see that, you know, the campaign is taking us seriously and is listening to us and understands how important of a voting bloc that young people are," Duggal told CBS News. Appalachian State is one of 16 institutions in the University of North Carolina network. The state is also home to about a dozen historically Black colleges. The Biden campaign believes the many HBCUs provide the perfect infrastructure to support their youth outreach strategy. The team is planning to open 11 North Carolina field offices this cycle that will include staffing focused on turning out campuses across the state.