A QUEENSLAND University professor thinks Donald Trump has the edge over Hillary Clinton in the US election, based on his algorithm that tracks social media data.

Big data expert Professor Xue Li has the Republican nominee sitting on 45.81 per cent and the Democratic on 45.76 per cent with a small chunk of undecided voters in between.

His live tool uses publicly available data from Twitter to update with the previous 24 hours worth of social media posts based on 17 separate issues from immigration to education, guns, tax, crime and abortion.

He said the gap has significantly tightened in the last week following the revelation the FBI would be pouring over 650,000 emails found on the laptop of disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner. He is in the process of separating from one of Hillary Clinton’s top aides, Huma Abedin.

“Things are getting very tight,” he told news.com.au. “This time is very different from previous elections because there are a lot of negative opinions towards both candidates.”

“In the past all the predictions we are looking for positive opinions but now it’s negative on both sides.”

“There are a lot of very angry Americans … That anger has increased since the news on the FBI re-examining Hillary’s emails.”

The Professor has used the tool to predict the 2013 Australian federal election and the 2015 Queensland election with 95 per cent accuracy, University of Queensland claims. It does not take Facebook or other “private” social media sites into account.

The latest Real Clear Politics Poll Average shows Mrs Clinton on 46.6 per cent and Mr Trump on 45.3 per cent. A four-way average poll shows Clinton having gained two points, however the race remains extremely tight — particularly in battleground states.

This week, experts suggested Trump could benefit from a “Bradley effect” — where voters don’t admit to their real choice out of a sense of political correctness. It’s named after one-time Los Angeles mayoral candidate Tom Bradley who lost the election despite leading polls going into it.

This week Professor Allan Lichtman, who has predicted the winner for the last 30 years, predicted a Trump win based on his simple system of 13 true or false statements.

Professor Li said this election has been like no other in that it is “extremely dynamic” and could change over the course of the weekend.

The waveforms are much more dynamic than ever before. This is a very unique situation we are dealing with.”