The final push for the White House

[chahlley]

(Americas Today Tuesday 8 November 2016)

The final push for the White House

Early voters lining up outside the West Dade Regional Library in Miami, Florida, on Sunday.

PHOTO: THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Published: 12:10 AM, November 8, 2016

WASHINGTON — They campaigned urgently, even frantically, at airfields and arenas, on a college campus in Wisconsin and in a Philadelphia church.

Democratic presidential nominee Mrs Hillary Clinton and her running mate Senator Tim Kaine, their prospects brightened by news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had found no new troublesome emails in a review of Mrs Clinton’s private server, pleaded with Americans early on Monday (Nov 7) to get out and vote as if their very way of life were on the line.

Scrambling across the electoral map, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, addressed supporters in darker and even graver terms, with Mr Trump casting the election as a now-or-never moment for his brand of right-wing nationalism.

Surpassing the anxious entreaties of an ordinary presidential race, Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump begged voters to see the election as a choice of almost apocalyptic significance.

Mr Trump called the vote on Tuesday a final chance to turn back foreign forces menacing American identity, while Mrs Clinton said the country’s long journey towards equality for women and minorities was at risk of being reversed in a day’s balloting.

Mrs Clinton has delivered a broad message of national unity in the closing days of the campaign, offering herself to voters as an avatar of tolerance and reconciliation, in contrast to Mr Trump.

Mr Trump, for his part, warned voters that they would never again see a candidate like him within reach of the presidency.

Branding 69-year-old Mrs Clinton the “most corrupt candidate ever to seek the office of the presidency”, he urged supporters to “deliver justice at the ballot box on Nov 8”. At a rally in Iowa, Mr Trump said over and over that he represented a “last chance” for voters angry about foreign trade and immigration.

“The media, Wall Street and the politicians are trying to stop us, because they know we will fix the rigged system,” he said.

The announcement from FBI director James Comey, reaffirming his assessment that Mrs Clinton should not be charged with a crime over her handling of classified information, came as a blow to Mr Trump and other Republicans hoping that a pre-election bombshell would upend Mrs Clinton’s campaign.

US stock index futures rose more than 1 per cent after the FBI announcement and the US dollar also strengthened in Asian trading against major currencies.

Markets have tended to see Mrs Clinton as the status quo candidate, and news favouring her bid often boosts investors’ risk appetite. Global financial markets slipped last week as opinion polls showed the presidential race tightening.

But as it stands, Mrs Clinton appears to be entering election day as a solid if not overwhelming favourite, although the race has narrowed over the past few weeks. A poll published on Monday by Bloomberg Politics-Selzer & Co found that Mrs Clinton was leading Mr Trump by 44 per cent to 41 per cent nationally.

And Mrs Clinton appears to be benefiting from a surge in participation by Latino voters as well as unusually high enthusiasm among women. Early voting by Latinos may have already given Mrs Clinton a decisive lead in the swing state of Nevada, as well as a meaningful edge in Florida, a state without which Mr Trump has no path to the presidency.

Mrs Clinton and her leading surrogates have also been making a last-minute appeal asking voters to embrace the idea of a female president, seeking to increase her lead among women and to persuade some hesitant men to discard their reservations about her gender.

The Clinton campaign also booked national airtime during football games early on Sunday night to run a pair of commercials featuring men who said they could not vote for Mr Trump because of his treatment of women.

Mr Tom Bonier, a Democratic data strategist and the chief executive of the firm TargetSmart, said there was ample evidence that women were “especially motivated to vote in this election”. He added that enthusiasm from female voters alone could push Mrs Clinton’s final vote tally a point above where she stands in public polls.

“In every single battleground state, women not only make up a clear majority of ballots cast thus far, but the female share of the electorate is larger than it was in the 2012 election,” he said.

Female voters may play an especially influential role in a few states 
Mr Trump is targeting late in the campaign, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota, where there are fewer non-white voters and Mrs Clinton’s lead depends in part on white women in the suburbs.

Mr Trump has increasingly staked his candidacy on long-shot states in the Upper Midwest that have not voted Republican in a generation or more, in an attempt to escape the backlash against his candidacy from Latino voters in more diverse swing states.

He campaigned at a frenzied pace early on Monday, holding events in five states. But with the exception of Iowa, where he is ahead in the polls, Mr Trump is competing on unfriendly turf, scrounging for support in unlikely areas like liberal-leaning Minneapolis and the prosperous suburbs of Northern Virginia.

While Mrs Clinton has campaigned with an eye towards turning out specific voter groups in crucial states — firing up black voters in North Carolina and Latinos in South and Central Florida, for instance — Mr Trump has criss-crossed a wider map of states, trumpeting the same fiery themes that have animated his candidacy from the start. With hours left to campaign, he has done little to expand the reach of his message beyond his mostly white, less educated political base. AGENCIES