RALEIGH, N.C. — With three excruciatingly close races for president, governor and United States Senate after four years of pitched political battles, it is not as if North Carolina needed much more to concoct enticing story lines this election year.

But the plot turns have kept coming: Boycotts. Protests. Riots. The firebombing of a local Republican headquarters. A hurricane that inundated a vast eastern section of the state this month, one that may serve to buoy the political life of Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican.

There may be no other state with as much to sort through — or as much at stake this year — as North Carolina. Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump are in a tight battle here, one of the most contested swing states. The governor’s race between Mr. McCrory and his Democratic challenger, Attorney General Roy Cooper, may be the closest in the country, as well as being a sort of referendum on the state’s sharp right turn in recent years. And control of the United States Senate could be determined by an equally close race here between Richard Burr, an incumbent Republican, and his Democratic challenger, Deborah Ross.