The Democratic nominee leads by 4.4 points, down from 7.1, according to Real Clear Politics’ national average poll, as analysts see race tightening

Hillary Clinton’s dominant lead over Donald Trump in opinion polls is narrowing slightly as the final week before the US presidential election approaches, with independents and undecided voters appearing to gravitate toward the two main candidates.

Though few analysts believe the latest numbers will disprove almost universal predictions of a Democratic win on 8 November – even despite the news that the FBI is investigating newly-discovered emails sent by Clinton via a personal server – they also highlight unusually large spreads between poll results in an election that has broken many of the conventional laws of American politics.

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A well-regarded rolling average of national opinion polls calculated by Real Clear Politics showed a 4.4 percentage point lead for Clinton over Trump on Friday, with libertarian Gary Johnson and Green candidate Jill Stein dropping to their lowest levels since polling for the 2016 election began.

Ten days ago, after struggling in the first two presidential debates and still fending off damaging allegations of sexual assault, Trump was 7.1 points behind in the same four-way rolling average of national polls, though much of his gain since appears to have been at the expense of Johnson rather than Clinton.



The tightening of the race has prompted some analysts to somewhat adjust upward their predictions of how likely it is that Trump could pull off a surprise win.

Nate Silver, who runs statistics-driven website FiveThirtyEight.com and correctly predicted the 2012 result, says his modeling of poll numbers and wider historical trends suggests the Republican now has around a one in five chance of winning – up from the lows seen during the debates but still down sharply from the near even chance he had based just on polls earlier in the year.

“Clearer signs now of a tighter race, as Trump has inched up to 21% in our polls-plus forecast (19% in polls-only),” he wrote on Friday.

Silver acknowledged that the wide disparity among pollsters about the size of Clinton’s lead – which has ranged from 1 to 14 points in recent days – is unusual, but argued that that is a healthy reflection of different methodologies.

Analysis at the state level continues to show a difficult path to the required 270 electoral college votes for Trump, particularly as the 17 million votes cast already in early voting point to an unusually strong Democratic turnout in must-win states, such as Nevada and Florida.

To turn things around in the barely 270 hours remaining, Trump would need to hold on to Republican states like Utah and Arizona where his support has been slipping; win the crucial battlegrounds of Ohio, Florida and North Carolina; and pull off a surprise in swing state like New Hampshire, Nevada or Pennsylvania, all of which appeared to have slipped out of his grasp in recent weeks.

As both candidates head to Arizona next – practically unknown territory for a Democratic presidential nominee – before a frantic final 10 days of campaigning, there were signs of the strain for Republicans.

Trump continued to call on his supporters to disregard the evidence of poor poll numbers and watch for vote-rigging. “I’ve been saying if we win ’cos I want to be nice, right, but the people are getting angry at me so we’ll just say when we win on November 8,” he told a rally in Geneva, Ohio.

He also joked, “We should just cancel the election and give it to Trump,” after hinting that the opening of his new hotel in Washington was a sign he would get to Pennsylvania Avenue “one way or another” this year.



Meanwhile his vice-presidential running mate Mike Pence had a narrow escape when his plane skidded off the runway in heavy rain at New York’s LaGuardia airport on Thursday night.

Clinton meanwhile continues to show much more confidence in her lead, even though Democrats are warning supporters not to take anything for granted in the final days.

Rumours circulated widely in Washington on Friday that she was considering asking the current vice-president, Joe Biden, to be her secretary of state, a suggestion that will help both shore up support among the party’s populist base and signal her intention to look beyond 8 November.

She also received a welcome boost on Thursday from the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has emerged as one of the most popular political figures of the 2016 election cycle. “Hillary doesn’t play,” she said after a joint appearance in North Carolina.