North Carolina, a state that has voted Republican in eight out of the last nine presidential elections, has emerged as a key battleground in 2016. One reason why: The state's rapid population growth has been powered by Americans moving there from other parts of the country, and these transplants lean Democratic.

Results from the NBC News North Carolina exit poll show Republican Donald Trump leading narrowly among those born in the Tar Heel State. But Democrat Hillary Clinton is ahead by double-digits among voters who were born elsewhere but moved to North Carolina at some point in their lifetimes.

Exit polls indicate that the same patterns hold in two other close races today in North Carolina: that between GOP Gov. Pat McCrory and his Democratic opponent Roy Cooper, and Republican Sen. Richard Burr and Democratic challenger Deborah Ross.  In each contest, the Republican candidate leads among those born in North Carolina while the Democrat is ahead among those born out of state.

NBC News characterized all three of these races as either too early or too close to call when North Carolina polls closed at 7:30 p.m. EST.

Throughout Election Night, a team of survey research analysts will be crunching the numbers on who voted, what issues were on their minds and why they voted the way they did.

The team includes Stephanie Psyllos, manager of exit polling, NBC News; Scott Keeter, senior survey advisor at Pew Research Center; Courtney Kennedy, director of survey research at Pew Research Center; Cary Funk, associate director of research at Pew Research Center; Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute; Maureen Michaels, president of Michaels Opinion Research Inc.; Mara Ostfeld, postdoctoral fellow, Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan; Patrick Egan, associate professor of politics and public policy at New York University; Hannah Hartig, assistant director, University of Pennsylvania's Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies; Jennifer Su, senior project director, Princeton Survey Research Associates International; and Andrew Arenge, assistant producer, NBC News. The NBC News Exit Poll Desk works closely with digital editors David Taintor and Elizabeth Johnstone to curate the stories we produce.