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U.S.
presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump headed Wednesday to
political battleground states they need to win the November 8 election. Clinton is campaigning in the northeastern
state of New Hampshire with her one-time rival for the Democratic presidential
nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, as she looks to woo younger voters
who were attracted to his candidacy in the months-long campaign she eventually
won. Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, is campaigning for her in the key
mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina, where Clinton and Trump, the Republican
nominee, have made numerous appearances.
First lady
Michelle Obama appeared in a new Clinton campaign ad, telling voters that she
supports the former U.S. secretary of state because "Hillary will be a
president our kids can look up to." Obama, without mentioning the brash
Trump's name and his campaign taunts against Clinton, said, "Our children
watch everything we do, and the person we elect as president has the power to
shape their lives for years to come."
The first lady
is campaigning for Clinton in yet another important election state,
Pennsylvania, in the eastern part of the country, with stops in its two biggest
cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In Philadelphia, she told a group of young
voters, "I'm inspired by her persistence, her consistency, by her heart
and by her guts."
President Barack
Obama, a staunch Clinton supporter, told a radio interviewer that he is
frustrated that voters have not embraced Clinton's candidacy as much as he
would like. He suggested that one reason is that Clinton is a woman in a
country that has never had a female president.
Trump, the
Republican nominee, is headed to Chicago, the country's third-biggest city and
a Democratic stronghold, where he has little chance of winning. Later he is
appearing at rallies in two nearby closely contested states, Iowa and
Wisconsin.
Polls shows
Clinton edge
U.S.
presidential elections are not decided by a national popular vote, but rather
by individual races in the 50 states, with each state's importance in the
overall outcome weighted by its population. Winning presidential candidates
have to amass a majority of 270 votes in the 538-member electoral college based
on the state-by-state results.
After Monday's
debate, independent political analysts widely gave Clinton the edge after she
kept Trump on the defensive, attacking him for not releasing his U.S. tax
returns for public scrutiny, his lengthy history of slurs against women, and
his years-long campaign to try to prove the debunked claim that President Obama
was born in Kenya and is not a U.S. citizen.
In the immediate
aftermath of the debate, watched by a record of more than 80 million Americans,
political analysts suggested that Clinton, locked in a tight race with Trump,
could pick up an additional two percentage points or more of support. The
Politico/Morning Consult poll, which had Trump ahead by one point before the
debate, said its first post-debate polling now showed Clinton with a
three-point edge, a four-percentage-point gain.
Trump, Clinton
reaction
Trump's advisers
say they are frustrated by his debate performance and intend to try to get him
to practice more before his next encounter with Clinton set for October 9, the
second of three planned debates. But Trump resisted intensive preparation
before the Monday matchup, the Trump aides told The New York Times.
In the face of
the wide assessment that Clinton had bested him in the debate six weeks before
the election, Trump said on his Twitter account that he raised $18 million for
his campaign in the hours after the debate.
Clinton said
after the debate, "I felt so positive about it. The real point is about
temperament and fitness and qualification to hold the most important, the
hardest job in the world." She said there were "some very clear
differences" between her and Trump.
He told a
campaign rally in Florida, "She's the candidate of yesterday, and ours is
the campaign and we're the people of the future. Her only experience has been a
failure."
A third-party
candidate, Libertarian Gary Johnson, who is collecting single-digit support in
the presidential race, wrote in a New York Times opinion article that "the
America I know wasn't on the television screen" at the Clinton-Trump
debate.
"Americans
want to be able to choose a president who is capable of reason, of learning
from failures, and of telling them the truth, even when it hurts," Johnson
said. "Most of all, they want to choose a president who will adhere to the
Constitution and will make government live within its means." In the weeks
before the debate, Johnson did not meet the 15 percent national polling
threshold to be invited to the debate, but his name will be on the ballot in
all 50 states.