Clinton Rallies Michigan Base as Trump Jumps Into Blue Minnesota

Karen McDougal sizzling photo shoot on the beach

Donald Trump visits traditionally blue Minnesota on Sunday while Hillary Clinton has added an extra stop in Michigan as the candidates attempt to shore up their positions and undermine the others in the final stretch of a tight and bitter U.S. presidential campaign.

A flurry of polls on Sunday showed Clinton maintains a lead nationwide, but key states including Ohio and Florida are still neck-and-neck.

The Republican nominee, a New York real estate developer whos waged a controversial outsider bid for the White House, told supporters in Florida on Saturday that he is going to Minnesota, and swapped a Twin Cities appearance for a previously announced Wisconsin event. No Republican has carried Minnesota since 1972.

Were going into what they used to call Democrat strongholds, where were now either tied or leading, Trump said at a rally in Tampa. Were going up to Minnesota, which traditionally has not been Republican at all, and were doing phenomenally, we just saw a poll.

Trump may have been referring to an Ipsos/Reuters poll that showed Clinton ahead by 5 points in the state yet with many voters still undecided and, in theory, ripe for the picking.

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Nationwide, Clinton leads Trump by a 1.8-point margin head to head, and by 2.2 points when third-party candidates are included, according to a RealClearPolitics average.

The latest polls suggest voters may again be leaning Clintons way after narrowing over recent weeks. The Democrat leads Trump 44 percent to 40 percent, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released on Sunday. The final Politico/Morning Consult poll showed Clinton up by 45 percent to 42 percent. And an ABC News/Washington Post daily tracking poll put Clintons lead at five points, its widest since Oct. 26.

Millions have already cast ballots, and voting tallies in some states are exceeding levels of four years ago. In Florida, some 5.7 million ballots had been cast through Friday, up 19 percent from 2012, with Democrats holding a small edge.

Democrats have done well in Nevada, propelled by a surge of voting in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, on Friday. Trump on Saturday called conditions there rigged become some polling places stayed open late to process large numbers of voters already standing in line -- a common and legal practice across the country.

Ballot-Harvesting Ruling

Meanwhile, the race in Arizona could be roiled after the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday reinstated a Republican-backed law that makes it a crime to collect early ballots from voters and bring them to a polling place. So-called ballot harvesting is one of the most popular and effective methods for Hispanics and Native Americans to vote in Arizona, where the race is close.

Clinton, the former secretary of state, spent Saturday in Florida and Pennsylvania and plans another appearance in the Keystone state on Sunday. She also will visit Ohio with NBA star LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and New Hampshire. President Barack Obama will campaign for Clinton in Florida on Sunday and Michigan on Monday. Former President Bill Clinton will hit Michigan on Sunday.

Trump is basically going everywhere over those last few days and just cramming in every single state, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters aboard the candidates campaign plane on Saturday. As far as Im concerned, the more time he spends in Minnesota and Nevada, the better. We have tried to calibrate our schedule to be in states at the peak time for voting.

Outsider Message

While Minnesota hasnt been thought of as competitive, Trump is betting that his outsider message, vow to drain the swamp in Washington and economic appeal to disaffected middle- and lower-income white people could give him a chance there.

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He plans a frenetic day of barnstorming on Sunday that includes stops in Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia as well as Minnesota. Mondays schedule so far has rallies in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Trump and his aides insist his supporters enthusiasm will give him an edge on Tuesday. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway predicted serpentine-like lines of voters ready to cast their ballot for the former host of televisions The Apprentice.

Clintons team, meanwhile, has staged a massive voter-outreach effort capped off this weekend by what it estimated would be almost 1 million volunteers.

In a race that may be won by a razor-thin margin, the Clinton and Trump campaigns have said theyve readied vote-monitoring programs including lawyers and election observers in key states, anticipating shenanigans. The Republican has warned for weeks of a rigged political system, and in the final presidential debate he declined to say he would accept the elections outcome if he lost.

New Allegations

The election was upended with 11 days left when FBI Director James Comey announced hes reviewing thousands of new e-mails that may be connected to the investigation of Clintons use of a private e-mail server. Yet even as that episode breathed life into a central line of attack used by Trump for months, he found himself fending off new allegations of an extra-marital affair published Friday by the Wall street Journal.

The paper reported that the parent company of the National Enquirer paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for her account of an affair with the New York developer -- and never published it. Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks has denied the story.

Deciphering Electoral Map

Mook said the Clinton team feels good based on the amount of early voting in Florida, where Clinton doesnt plan to campaign again. If Clinton wins Florida, she could afford to lose a battleground state such as Pennsylvania or Michigan and still win the race, while Trump needs to capture all the key battleground races, he said.

Clintons campaign touted the strength of its outreach, saying it had made 45 million direct contacts with voters - either knocks on doors or phone calls -- since the start of early voting in September. It has released new television ads set to run through Election Day in the battleground states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Clinton also has been using big-name performers to help push voter turnout, especially among younger voters and blacks she needs to win. Besides Saturdays concert in Philadelphia with pop star Katy Perry, she attended a performance with singer Beyonce, rapper Jay Z and other musicians in Cleveland on Friday, and with Jennifer Lopez in Miami last weekend.

I really think were going to send a message from coast to coast, east to west, north to south, about who we are as a country, Clinton said before Perry performed in Philadelphia on Saturday night.

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Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-06/trump-eyeing-clinton-s-midwest-bedrock-for-last-stretch-pickups