Florida, Florida, Florida: National Race A Dead-Heat As Polls Swing In Toss-Up States

As the 2016 Presidential campaign comes to a frenetic end, with both candidates frantically hopping from rally to rally across several key swing states, RealClearPolitics made two significant shifts in its “no toss up states” electoral college map.

1. Shifting Florida from Clinton to Trump as the latest Trafalgar Group poll showed Trump up by 4 points…

2. Shifting New Hampshire from Trump to Clinton as the latest Emerson poll showed Clinton up by 1 point…

Which left the electoral map in an almost dead-heat on election eve…

As The Hill reports, the Democratic nominee will enter Tuesday with several different paths to the White House, and Clinton wasn’t timid about showing her assurance when asked about the challenge of unifying the nation after a bitterly divisive presidential campaign. 

“I think I have some work to do to bring the country together,” Clinton said. “I really do want to be the president for everybody.”

Clinton held a lead of around 3 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics national average. Her margin had been twice as large in mid-October. Nonetheless, her lead has actually ticked upward from a recent low in the past few days.

Trump insisted that he was going to win, pointing to his tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters. Lines for Trump rallies snaked around the grounds even for last-minute stops in states that are normally safe for Democrats in presidential elections, such as Minnesota.

“The whole psyche will change tomorrow,” Trump said at a Monday rally in Florida. 

While Clinton betrayed no nervousness, her campaign lavished attention on Michigan, a seemingly safe state for the Democrat that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988. 

President Obama spoke in Ann Arbor, while the candidate herself returned for the second time since Friday for a rally in Grand Rapids. Those efforts suggest the Clinton campaign sees challenges in the Wolverine State, which Obama won by 10 points in 2012. 

A Trump victory in Michigan would upend the electoral map, suggesting that Clinton could be in real trouble, with demographically comparable states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio also in play.

“She’s defending states she thought she had locked up months ago,” Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie said on a conference call with reporters. “A late surge of enthusiasm for Donald Trump is forcing her to make an unanticipated last-minute defense of these states, particularly Pennsylvania and Michigan.”

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook dismissed Trump’s efforts, calling his blue-state strategy a desperate end-of-game ploy with no real muscle behind it.

“I think he needed to get those into play much earlier,” Mook said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“I’m not concerned that he’s spending so much time there at the end because he didn’t build a ground game.”