One wave of surveys showed Donald Trump surging ahead of Hillary Clinton but another shows Clinton with the upper hand. | Getty Wave of battleground-state polling tells two stories for Trump, Clinton

Two sets of battleground-state polls from two different northeastern university polling outfits this week – and two different narratives about the current state of the presidential race.

One wave of surveys, from Quinnipiac University, showed Donald Trump surging ahead of Hillary Clinton in Florida and Pennsylvania, and tying Clinton in Ohio. But in a separate set of polls released Friday morning, it’s Clinton with the upper hand in four key battlegrounds.

New NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls in Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia – states worth a combined 66 electoral votes – show the presumptive Democratic nominee with leads of between six and nine points. Combined with three other NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls released earlier this week, the Poughkeepsie, N.Y.-based pollster had Clinton ahead in six of the seven swing states they surveyed.

In some cases, the polls are more hopeful for Clinton than other public surveys. But the balance of the other polling more closely resembles the Marist results than the Quinnipiac surveys.

The new polls aren’t all good news for Clinton. In each of the states, majorities of voters view her unfavorably, and Clinton fails to earn even 45 percent of the vote.

But it’s worse for Trump. The presumptive Republican nominee’s unfavorables are over 60 percent in each of the states, and he can’t even crack 40 percent on the ballot test.

In Colorado, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll found Clinton eight points ahead of Trump, 43 percent to 35 percent. It’s the fourth poll conducted since the FBI said Clinton shouldn’t be charged for her use of a private email server as secretary of state, and all have shown Clinton with a lead of between seven and 13 points. The POLITICO Battleground States polling average gives Clinton a lead of 7.8 points.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll in Florida gives Clinton a seven-point lead, 44 percent to 37 percent. That’s a larger lead for Clinton than the POLITICO Battleground States polling average, which only shows Clinton ahead by 1.8 points – and includes Trump’s three-point lead in this week’s Quinnipiac poll.

In North Carolina, the new Marist poll shows Clinton ahead by six points, 44 percent to 38 percent. There have been fewer recent polls in North Carolina, but including surveys in June, Clinton has a 3.8-point lead in the POLITICO Battleground States average.

In the fourth state, Virginia, the new poll has Clinton ahead by nine points, 44 percent to 35 percent. That’s similar to a Fox News poll released this week, which gave Clinton a seven-point lead. Clinton leads by a smaller, 5.2-point margin in the POLITICO Battleground States average.

The variances between the Marist and Quinnipiac polls extend down the ballot. While Quinnipiac gave Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio a large lead over his possible opponent, Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, Marist only shows Rubio ahead by three points.

Quinnipiac also showed Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman and Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey ahead by wide margins. But Marist had Portman tied with former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland and Toomey trailing his Democratic opponent, Kathleen McGinty.

All the surveys come as the national polls have pointed toward a tightening race. Clinton leads Trump by about three points in both the RealClearPolitics and HuffPost Pollster national averages.

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls were conducted July 5-11. The wave of surveys included live telephone interviews with 794 registered voters in Colorado, 871 registered voters in Florida, 907 registered voters in North Carolina and 876 registered voters in Virginia. The margins of error are plus or minus 3.5 percentage points in Colorado and 3.3 percentage points in the other three states.