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Donald Trump is mounting a comeback in the polls - but he still trails entering the closing stretch

Allan Smith   

Donald Trump is mounting a comeback in the polls - but he still trails entering the closing stretch
Politics3 min read

GettyImages 619332608

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Donald Trump.

The polls are tightening as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton now have less than 10 days before judgment day on November 8.

Amid the fallout over FBI Director James Comey's bombshell letter to congressional leaders Friday reactivating the investigation into Clinton's private email server, Trump has seen his deficit in the RealClearPolitics polling average shrink to fewer than 3 points nationally.

In the two-way race, that's the tightest the polls have been since early October - before the New York Times' partial release Trump's 1995 tax returns showed he may have avoided paying federal income tax for years, and before a tape emerged of Trump boasting of being able to make sexual advances on women without their consent.

That was also before several women subsequently alleged Trump of making unwanted sexual advances on them, and before two of the presidential debates.

The numbers Monday showed a near-identical race when Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein were factored in, with Clinton leading by 2.8 points. Sunday's 2.6-point lead for Clinton in the four-way average was also the closest it had been since the start of October.

Here's a look:

Screen Shot 2016 10 31 at 10.00.56 AM

RealClearPolitics

Screen Shot 2016 10 31 at 10.01.10 AM

RealClearPolitics

A new batch of battleground state polls published Monday, meanwhile, by the GOP firm Remington Research showed that the race has actually remained virtually the same in the days since the email revelation broke. But many of the key battlegrounds show a close race that could swing the balance either way.

Clinton held a lead of 1 point in Colorado, 2 points in Pennsylvania, 4 points in Virginia, and 4 points in Wisconsin, (compared with leads of 2, 3, 5, and 5 points, respectively, a week prior). Trump held a lead of 4 points in Florida - the biggest swing compared to last week, when Remington showed a tied race there - a 4-point lead in Nevada, a 2-point lead in North Carolina, and a 5-point lead in Ohio. The swings in the latter three states also represented a slight improvement for Trump.

However, Clinton is polling better in each state in the RealClearPolitics average for each state.

The only national poll to be conducted and published after Friday's FBI revelation came from Politico/Morning Consult. It found Clinton with the same 3-point lead she had before the news broke.

The below chart shows how the litany of October surprises have, somehow, done little to affect the polling done by Morning Consult:

Screen Shot 2016 10 31 at 9.54.56 AM

Politico/Morning Consult

In renowned statistician Nate Silver's "Polls-plus" forecast on the data-journalism outlet FiveThirtyEight, Clinton's chances of winning on November 8 stood at 75.8%, a low point since early October. But the projection has her easily hitting the needed 270 electoral votes to capture the election.

Screen Shot 2016 10 31 at 10.01.56 AM

FiveThirtyEight

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FiveThirtyEight

The most recent Business Insider electoral projection, conducted prior to the FBI news, showed the same, with Clinton forecast to capture at least 293 electoral votes compared to Trump's 187. Fifty-eight electoral votes are in the toss-up category.

Electoral college map 10 26 16 v2

Business Insider/Andy Kiersz

NOW WATCH: Animated map shows how drastically split different demographics are this election

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