The reason Kamala Harris keeps visiting North Carolina is made evident in an eye-popping pattern her campaign volunteers have noticed while knocking on doors.

What they see are signs of a state growing so rapidly that Asheville’s airport is a giant construction site and almost six per cent of the city’s residents have moved here from another state in just one year.

Campaign volunteer Susan Thomas only got here two months ago, and she’s already canvassing on behalf of the Democratic presidential candidate.

She hears a familiar story: one person, after another, after another, tells her they’ve just moved from somewhere else.

In the span of just a few minutes last Sunday, Thomas encountered South Carolina Democrats who moved here this year for cooler weather and bluer politics, beside another family of South Carolina Democrats who just moved in next door. She then came across a block party hosted by recently arrived California Democrats, where a Democrat from New Orleans was standing beside the host.