North Carolina political operatives are skeptical that, unless the chaos in Charlotte continues for weeks, the issue will make a substantial dent in the race. But Republicans and some Democrats do say that the dynamic creates an opening for Trump to further shore up and energize the GOP base—something he has struggled to do—predicting voters will respond to his campaign’s law-and-order message and his staunch defense of police, even amid national concerns over institutional police racism. A senior adviser to the Trump campaign said only that Trump had been in the state earlier this week and “we have not yet announced the date of our next trip back to the state.”

“I certainly think unrest feeds into Trump’s narrative that ‘America’s falling apart, we need to make America great again,’” said Tom Jensen, a Democratic pollster whose firm is based in North Carolina. “My sense is, most white North Carolinians who would be really repulsed by what’s going on in Charlotte would be in Trump’s camp. I doubt it moves the needle a lot, but the race is just about tied … something like that is never going to move the race by 3 or 4 points, but it can change the race on the margins, and we’re on the margins.”

Thus far, Clinton has largely stuck to tweeting in support of Scott, rather than commenting on the Wednesday night protests. And Trump was vague in a Fox News appearance Thursday morning, lamenting the “lack of spirit between the white and the black,” and going on to assert that amid the chaos “our country looks bad to the world” in a speech later in the day.