Hillary Clinton (left) and Donald Trump (right)
Support for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton took a slight dip this week amid news of the FBI’s renewed investigation into her questionable use of a private email server.
According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll, Clinton is now trailing GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump by one percentage point — a first since May. The latest results show that 46 percent of likely voters support Trump, while 45 percent support Clinton. When broken down to decimals, a mere .7 of a percentage point splits the two candidates, ABC News reports.
Last week’s revelation concerning newly discovered emails by the FBI is likely the cause for the slight increase in support for Trump. Right-wing voters are hoping the renewed probe will give their candidate an extra boost in the race to the White House. But experts say it’s too little, too late for the FBI news to have much of an impact on the way Americans will vote come Election Day.
The Associated Press reports that millions of voters cast their ballots ahead of Friday’s news concerning the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton emails. With the announcement coming so late in the election, it would be almost impossible for Trump to win the support of voters in battleground states like Florida, Nevada and North Carolina before Election Day.
For instance, over 3.7 million early ballots have already been cast in Florida, according to the news site. Democratic ballots are nearly tied with those cast by registered Republican voters. In North Carolina, about 1.6 million early votes have been cast with Democratic ballots leading 44 to 31 percent, the Associated Press reports.
Early voting was already underway in 37 states when the FBI announced its examination of newly discovered emails, which reportedly stemmed from a dormant investigation into the email practices of Clinton and her aides earlier this year.
Per the Associated Press, the FBI will sift through the thousands of messages, but there’s no word on whether the agency will announce any significant findings before Nov. 8. It’s also unclear how many emails are actually pertinent to the previous investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server.
The newly discovered correspondence was seized during an unrelated investigation into disgraced New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is accused of sending sexually explicit messages to a teenage girl. Weiner was recently separated from his wife, Huma Abedin, who serves as one of Clinton’s closest aides.
Abedin asserted there was no way her work-related emails would be on the computer of her now estranged husband, the Associated Press reports. Clinton echoed the same sentiments Monday, stating that the FBI “had no case here” with their renewed investigation into her emails.
“I am sure a lot of you may be asking what this new email story is about and why in the world the FBI would decide to jump into an election with no evidence of any wrong doing with just days to go,” Clinton said at a rally in Florida over the weekend. “That’s a good question.”
“It’s pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election,” she added.
