GRAND RAPIDS, Mich/SCRANTON, Pa (Reuters) – The US presidential campaign neared its end yesterday in the same angry tone it began, with Republican Donald Trump calling Democrat Hillary Clinton a “phony” and Clinton accusing him of splitting the country, as a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll showed Clinton with a strong chance of winning.
Clinton and Trump raced through several battleground states in a last-ditch attempt to encourage their supporters to show up and vote today.
Clinton sought to capture more support from Latinos, African-Americans and young people, while Trump looked to win over disaffected Democrats and rev up a middle class that he said has been sidelined by the political establishment.
The Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project gave Clinton a 90 per cent chance of defeating Trump, seeing her on track to win 303 Electoral College votes out of the 270 needed, to Trump’s 235.
With surveys indicating a tight race in Michigan, which Democrats have long counted on winning, both candidates made campaign appearances there. Pennsylvania, another vote-rich state, was also seen as fertile ground by both camps in the closing hours of their campaigns.
“I want to take this moment to share a message with all of the Democratic voters in our country who are thirsting for change like everybody else,” Trump told a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “Hillary is the face of failure.”
Clinton was bolstered on the campaign trail by President Barack Obama, who spoke at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, urging young people who supported him in 2008 and 2012 to do the same for Clinton. Obama, ending his second term in office with strong approval ratings, reiterated his charge that Trump is “temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief,” and he cast the wealthy New York real estate developer as out of touch with most Americans.
“In his 70 years on Earth, the Donald has never shown any regard for working folks. I don’t think he knows working people, except for the folks who clean up in his hotels and the folks who mow the fairway on his golf course,” Obama said.
With only hours left before Election Day, the Clinton campaign was boosted by Sunday’s unexpected announcement by FBI Director James Comey that the agency stood by its July decision not to press any criminal charges in an investigation of Clinton’s email practices while she was secretary of state.
The latest opinion polls measuring popular support for each candidate showed Clinton narrowly ahead. She had a 5 percentage point lead over Trump nationally, with 44 per cent to 39 per cent support, according to latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
