RCP publisher Tom Bevan joins Stuart Varney on Fox Business Network to discuss the latest Fox News poll showing Donald Trump leading the key swing states of Nevada, Ohio and North Carolina. This development makes these five states leaning towards Clinton vitally important for her to win: Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, New Hampshire



"She's up only six points with women in Nevada," in the Fox News poll. Tom explains. "And up only three points with women in Ohio: Those numbers are not going to be good enough. Especially when you consider that she is trailing by 15-20 points among independents in all three states. Another number that jumped out at me is labor voters in Ohio, union households. She is trailing Donald Trump by two points in union households, that is a frightening number for Democrats. That is why he is ahead with a decent lead --five points-- in the critical state of Ohio."



Regarding the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing Hillary with a six point lead nationwide, Tom says: "That is the largest lead we have in our basket of polls, the RealClearPolitics average, which is about eight or nine polls. It is down from the WSJ poll, the last one, taken at the end of July/beginning of August, so there has actually been tightening since then. But they haven't done any polls in between then and now, so it is hard to compare apples-to-apples. That poll has a margin of error of 3.2 points, so [Clinton's lead] could actually be as low as three points. So I wouldn't necessarily call it an outlier, but it is definitely the most favorable poll at the moment for Hillary Clinton on the national level."



"The situation is this," he continued. "Trump has moved ahead in North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa, and he is dead tied with Hillary Clinton in Florida. Even if you give all those states to him, he is still short in the Electoral College. The other five competitive states: Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, New Hampshire. We've got some data in showing that in those states Hillary Clinton's lead is anywhere from five to nine points. So that is kind of her firewall, and unless Trump can breach that firewall, win one of those states, he is going to come up short on election day."



"But we still have seven weeks left, including this big debate on Monday night."