Press. voanews.com
One day ahead of the U.S. presidential election, Republican Donald Trump
and Democrat Hillary Clinton were campaigning Sunday in key election states, a
last-minute bid by both candidates to grab the attention of undecided voters
and find a path to victory.
National surveys continue to show Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of
state, with a narrow edge over Trump, a blunt-spoken real estate mogul making
his first run for elected office. Most polling analysts are predicting a
Clinton victory on Tuesday, but her advantage over Trump is not insurmountable.
Collections of recent national polls show Clinton, looking to become the
country's first female president, with about a two- or three-percentage-point
edge over Trump. The latest major tracking poll by The Washington Post and ABC
News pegged her lead at 48-43 percent.
U.S. presidential elections, however, are not decided by the national
popular vote but rather in the Electoral College, where the results are tallied
in each of the 50 states and the national capital, Washington. The biggest
states have the most electors in the Electoral College. Both Clinton and Trump
need a majority of at least 270 of the 538 electors to win.
Both Clinton and Trump have been heavily campaigning in numerous states
where the outcome is most in doubt, especially two Atlantic coastal states,
Florida and North Carolina.
On Sunday, however, Trump was set for rallies in five other states and
Clinton in three. Her surrogate, President Barack Obama, made another stop in
Florida, a state with 29 electoral votes that Trump concedes he needs to
capture to have a chance to claim the presidency. Obama has made 13 campaign
appearances for Clinton, exhorting voters to uphold his presidential policies on
numerous fronts, most of which Clinton has vowed to continue. Trump says he
quickly plans to undermine them if he wins.
Clinton told worshippers at an African-American church in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, "This election is about doing everything we can to stop the
movement to destroy President Obama's legacy. In fact, it is about building on
the gains and progress we've made in the last eight years. It is about choosing
hope over fear, unity over division and love over hate."
Trump started his day in the farm state of Iowa, where he has held a
small but consistent lead, and then headed to three states that have long voted
for Democratic presidential contenders, Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania,
in hopes of turning them away from Clinton. He was ending the day with a stop
in Virginia, a state that once routinely voted for Republican White House
aspirants but twice went for Obama, a Democrat, in 2008 and 2012.
In Iowa, Trump predicted that Clinton would be indicted for her handling
of classified material on her private, unsecured email server while she was the
country's top diplomat from 2009 to 2013. “We need a government that can go to
work on day one for the American people,” Trump declared. “That will be
impossible with Hillary Clinton, the prime suspect in a far-reaching criminal
investigation. Her current scandals and controversies will continue throughout
her presidency and will make it virtually impossible for her to govern.”
More than 41 million Americans have already voted in early voting
allowed in many states. One hundred thirty million are expected to have voted
by the end of Tuesday. Analysts say Clinton has several paths to reach the
270-electoral vote figure and become the country's 45th president when Obama
leaves office in January. Trump's chances appear to be narrower; he needs to
win battleground states he has been contesting with Clinton and capture some of
the 18 states that have voted for Democratic presidential candidates in each of
the last six elections.
Polling shows the Trump-Clinton contests in Michigan and Pennsylvania
especially could be close on Election Day, and both candidates are staging
last-minute rallies there. Clinton, ahead in Michigan throughout the campaign,
is making her first stop in the state Monday, while her husband, former
President Bill Clinton, visited Sunday and Obama on Monday. Obama and first
lady Michelle Obama are joining both Clintons at an election eve rally Monday
night in Philadelphia, the country's fifth largest city and a Democratic
stronghold.
Both Clinton and Trump have been painting a dark picture of what the
country would look like with the other in the White House. “It’s your last
chance to end government corruption to take back our country,” Trump told his
Iowa supporters.
Trump was referring to the email controversy that has dogged Clinton
throughout her presidential run. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently
announced the agency had discovered thousands of emails from Clinton's time as
secretary of state on the computer of Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of
top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The FBI said that as a result it has revived its
probe of Clinton's emails, after deciding in July that she was "extremely
careless" in her handling of national security material in the emails but
that no criminal charges were warranted.
In Florida on Saturday, Clinton told supporters, "I don’t think I
need to tell you all of the wrong things about Donald Trump. But here’s what I
want you to remember: I want to be the president for everybody. Everybody who
agrees with me, and people who don’t agree with me. People who vote for me!
People who don’t vote for me!"