THE BUSINESS INSIDER ELECTORAL PROJECTION: It's getting tighter!
With five days to go until Election Day, the race is tightening. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton still finds herself with enough projected electoral votes to secure the presidency - barely.
Using polling data from RealClearPolitics and The Washington Post/Survey Monkey, Business Insider found that Clinton, as of this week, would lead Trump 263-to-180 electoral votes in states that were either safe or likely bets to go in favor of either major party's nominee. It's a slight drop from Clinton's 272-to-181 advantage last week.
Business Insider judged that a safe state was one in which a candidate led by at least 8 percentage points, while a likely state was anywhere in which the nominee held a 4- to 8-point lead.
When including states leaning toward a candidate by 2 to 4 points, Clinton held a 272-to-209 advantage over Trump. Last week, Clinton was up 292-to-187 when including this category.
There was plenty of shifting on the map in just one week - which was prior to Friday's bombshell letter from FBI Director James Comey to congressional leaders that the agency uncovered emails "pertinent" to the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server.
North Carolina and Nevada went from leaning toward Clinton to dropping into the "toss-up" category. Ohio and Arizona moved from being toss-ups to leaning in favor of Trump. Iowa went from leaning toward Trump to becoming a toss-up. The toss-up states are where a major-party nominee held a lead of less than 2 points.
Other states that shifted to be less in favor of Clinton included Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, New Mexico, and Colorado, although all six stayed in favor of the candidate they had already been in slanted toward.