The Telegraph :
Polls are tightening as the race to become the 45th President of the United States enters its last week, with Donald Trump attempting to capitalise on Hillary Clinton’s latest email scandal.
Until election day on 8 November, follow our poll tracker to keep up-to-date with who’s on top. Based on polling data from RealClearPolitics, we have state-by-state predictions and an estimate of the overall electoral college vote. The news that the FBI has reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to send, receive and store government emails has handed Donald Trump an unexpected boost ahead of next Tuesday. The FBI has obtained a warrant to begin searching newly discovered emails belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide of Hillary Clinton, with Clinton’s use of emails also in the spotlight.
There is no sign that this new investigation will be completed by election day and it seems that Clinton will have to fight the final week of her campaign with unspecified allegations hanging over her.
This is ideal for Trump who was shown to be as many as 14 points behind Clinton in some polls before this latest scandal. Clinton has been ahead almost continuously in the Telegraph’s poll of polls, which takes an average of the last five polls published on RealClearPolitics.
She still retains a lead, but this could change in the coming days with some polls now showing a far closer race.
The presidential campaign has seen Donald Trump, once a Republican outsider, close the gap on Clinton before falling back after a series of controversies.
Trump has briefly pulled ahead a couple of times – first on 19 May. His polling threatened to consistently overtake Clinton in September, but has since fallen back after a series of allegations of sexual assault were made against him.
Trump is prone to making gaffes and alienating key demographic groups with his comments. His comments on sexually assaulting women, as well as poor performances in the presidential debates, had seen Clinton extend her lead. However, with the news that the FBI is once again investigating Clinton, a lot could change between now and election day.
The New York Times has worked out that, even one week before previous elections, a simple polling average has differed from the final result by about four percentage points. With the polls being still close, anything could happen. Each of the 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, has a certain amount of electoral college votes to award a candidate, based on the number of members of Congress it has. This is roughly in line with each area’s population. Except in Maine and Nebraska, the votes are given on a winner-takes-all basis.
This system matters, as the popular vote is less important than the electoral college vote. Clinton’s campaign should be buoyed by big Democratic states such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California, and these populous states could lead her to victory with their large number of electoral college votes.
For example, in 2008, Barack Obama won 53 per cent of the vote – but this led to 68 per cent of the electoral college vote. Such highly populated states played a large role when they backed the current president.
States like Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia have the power to swing the election. So far, neither Trump nor Clinton has a significant lead in these crucial states.
