Clinton supporters worry about close White House race

JACKSONVILLE, Fla/WINTERVILLE, N.C: Hillary Clinton’s supporters nervously eyed opinion polls showing the Democrat with a tenuous lead over Republican rival Donald Trump as the White House candidates raced through vital battleground states in a late search for votes.
Clinton was leading Trump by 6 percentage points, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found on Wednesday. That was the same advantage she held before FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress last week saying the agency had found a new cache of e-mails potentially related to its probe of Clinton e-mails.
Other polls have shown a far closer race, fueling Democratic worries about the state of the race just five days before Tuesday’s election. Clinton’s national lead over Trump eroded to 3 percentage points among likely voters in a New York Times/CBS News poll on Thursday, down from 9 points just two weeks ago.
An average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics website also showed her lead at 1.7 percentage points on Thursday, well down from the solid advantage she had until late last month.
“I’m worried that Trump may win,” said Nancy Dubs, 83, a retiree in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who said she was voting for Clinton.
“I think it’s maybe time to have a female president.”
For Clinton supporters, it has been a quick shift from confidence to anxiety.
“I think all of us are a little bit nervous,” said Rajnandini Pillai, a professor at California State University at San Marcos who plans to back Clinton.
“It seemed pretty much in the bag a couple weeks ago.”
Nevertheless, some polls showed Clinton recovering slightly from her slide in the past week. She has maintained her comfortable edge in the Reuters/Ipsos poll and she inched back into a 2-point lead over Trump in the latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll, which had shown Clinton falling slightly behind Trump earlier this week.
President Barack Obama, on the third day of a multi-state campaign trek for Clinton, adopted a sense of urgency before a raucous crowd at Florida International University.
“You have the chance to shape history,” Obama said.
“There are times where history is … moveable. Where you can make things better or worse. This is one of those moments.”
The tightening White House race has rattled financial markets as investors weigh a possible Trump victory. Investors have generally seen Clinton as the candidate who would maintain the status quo, while there is more market uncertainty over what a Trump presidency might mean in terms of economic policy, free trade and geopolitics.
Global equity prices drifted lower on Thursday as worries about the election continued to weigh on investor sentiment.

FOCUS ON BATTLEGROUND STATES

With the White House race decided on the Electoral College system of tallying wins on a state-by-state basis, Clinton and Trump are focused on a handful of battleground states. Trump began the day in Florida before heading to North Carolina for two rallies. Clinton was in North Carolina for two rallies.
Florida and North Carolina are both must-win states for Trump as he tries to piece together the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House.
Clinton, who has comfortable leads in big states such as California and New York, could more easily reach 270 votes without winning either state.
In Florida, Trump pressed his argument that the controversy over Clinton’s use of a private server for her e-mail rather than a government system when she was US secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 was part of a pattern of corruption that made her unfit for the White House.
FBI Director Comey concluded at the end of a year-long FBI probe in July that there were no grounds to bring any charges.
His brief letter advising Congress last Friday about the agency reviewing new e-mails said they might or might not be significant, but the news was seized on by Trump and other Republicans.
Republicans in Congress already have vowed to lead investigations of Clinton’s e-mail practices and her family charitable foundation.
“She is likely to be under investigation for many, many years. Also likely to conclude in a criminal trial,” Trump said in Jacksonville.
“This is not what we need in this country folks. we need somebody that’s going to go to work.”
Trump’s Slovenian-born wife Melania tried to bolster his standing with women during her first campaign-trail appearance, in a Philadelphia suburb.
“We must win on Nov. 8 and we must come together as Americans. We must treat each other with respect and kindness even when we disagree,” she said in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.
Clinton was in Arizona on Wednesday evening, addressing one of her largest rallies to date.
She told a crowd of about 15,000 at Arizona State University to imagine life with the volatile Trump in the White House, particularly for women, Latinos and Muslims.
Trump, a New York businessman who has never previously run for political office, has called for a ban on Muslims entering the country, launched his campaign by calling illegal immigrants from Mexico rapists and was captured in a 2005 video that surfaced last month boasting of groping women and making other unwanted advances.
“What would your life be like if he were in the White House?” Clinton said. “And the truth is we really don’t have to guess. We just have to look at everything he has said and done in his career and this campaign, it’s a good preview of what would likely happen,” she said.
Not all Clinton supporters were worried about her recent slip in the polls.
“There’s nothing I can do about it. With age comes a certain perspective,” said Jim Friederichs, 64, a gardener in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
“I know people that are not sleeping well because they’re worried about the election but jeez, what’s the point in that?“

source arabnews