For more than a decade, the Senate majority leader, Charles “Chuck” Schumer, has maintained an Ahab-like fixation on electing a Democrat to represent the Tarheel State, which some call a “white whale” for Democrats.

This year, with all eyes on Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada in the battle for control of the Senate, national Democrats are quietly doubling down on their efforts in North Carolina.

The race is proving to be an under-the-radar tossup, after narrow Democratic defeats since their taste of victory in 2008.

The Senate Majority PAC, a committee closely aligned with Senator Schumer, invested some $4 million into the North Carolina  race last week, bringing its total investment to about $10.5 million.

This is about half of the $20 million that the Senate Leadership Fund, which is closely aligned with the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has invested in the race.

The late-in-the-race $4 million investment shows that national Democrats still view it as a pickup opportunity, even as most attention has been focused elsewhere.

A professor of political science at Davidson College, Melody Crowder-Meyer, says “it makes sense that the parties are both investing in the race” even if the Senate seat has eluded Democrats in the past.

North Carolina “is a state where both Republicans and Democrats can and do win statewide races,” she tells the Sun. “If anything, it appears that it has become an even closer race recently relative to at the beginning of the summer. She said she thinks the two candidates “each have a good shot at winning.”

One theory for why the race has garnered so little attention from the national press is because “it’s a generic 2022 Senate race,” according to a professor of political science at North Carolina State University, Steven Greene.

He explains that both candidates are strong, drama-free and focusing mostly on national issues like inflation or abortion in their effort to replace Senator Burr, who is retiring at the end of his term. 

This is in sharp contrast to races in states like Pennsylvania or Georgia, where big personalities and personal scandals are dominating the headlines.

“This whole time this race has been sort of ignored,” Mr. Greene tells the Sun. “You’ve got these interesting stories in Senate campaigns sucking up the oxygen but the truth is that in this race both Senate candidates are good.”

The Republican nominee, Congressman Ted Budd, has focused his campaign on inflation and criticizing President Biden. The Democratic nominee, a former chief justice of North Carolina’s supreme court, Cheri Beasley, has focused her campaign on protecting abortion rights.

Mr. Greene says “national Democrats realize that when any race could flip the Senate it’s crazy not to invest in a place as competitive as North Carolina.”

“It strikes me as a Lucy and the football situation” for Democrats, Mr. Greene says. Still, this has not dissuaded them from investing in what is shaping up to be one of the tightest races of the year.

As it stands now, both FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics put Mr. Budd in the lead by about a point and a half, well within the margin of error of most polls.

Reflecting this, the forecasters at DecisionDeskHQ have designated the race as a tossup, a distinction shared only by the race in Nevada.

A professor of the practice of data science at Washington University in St. Louis, Liberty Vittert, chief data scientist at DecisionDeskHQ, notes that the race “has gone back and forth in our model.”

She says that it’s an interesting race because the state would usually “be solid Republican but in the past few years the suburban areas have become more and more Democrat.”

“Ted Budd is not a ‘bad candidate,’ unlike other states where the Senate races are closer and the Republican candidates have multiple and potentially insurmountable likeability issues,” she tells the Sun.

She also stresses that Ms. Beasley has been able to raise a healthy sum of money, but expressed skepticism on whether it would be enough “to overcome the ‘Republican Lean.’”

In terms of money, Ms. Beasley’s campaign has publicly announced that it raised $13.3 million in the third-quarter, nearly doubling Ms. Beasley’s budget, as her campaign had reported some $16 million in contributions up until the third quarter. 

Mr. Budd’s campaign has not yet released its latest fundraising data, but reported some $6.5 million in funds on August 23, suggesting that Mr. Budd’s election effort will probably have a slight edge in terms of financial resources.

In Ms. Vittert’s opinion, the race in North Carolina is notable when compared to those in Georgia or Pennsylvania, because it will be a test of whether Democrats can win a race against a strong Republican in 2022.