Poll: Florida 'too close to call'
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face off during the final presidential debate held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
TALLAHASSEE (NSF) - With Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump in the final sprint to Tuesday's election, the presidential race in Florida is virtually deadlocked, a new poll shows.
Clinton leads Trump by a margin of 46 percent to 45 percent in the state, with third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein combining for 4 percent, according to the poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University. Clinton led Trump by four points in an Oct. 17 Quinnipiac poll.
Quinnipiac described the races in Florida and North Carolina, another key battleground, as "too close to call." Trump, meanwhile, holds a five-point lead in Ohio, while Clinton leads by the same margin in Pennsylvania, the new poll indicates.
"After a two-year campaign which has produced the most unpopular presidential candidates in American history, the election comes down --- as it historically does --- to a handful of swing states," Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in comments released with the results. "No one has been elected president since 1960 without carrying two of the key swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And, this year, North Carolina has been added to the mix. All four of these key states remain close entering the final days. Florida, which has the largest cache of electoral votes, is a virtual tie and North Carolina is almost as close."
The Florida portion of the poll included 626 likely voters, who were surveyed from Thursday to Tuesday. That includes a tumultuous few days for the Clinton campaign, after FBI Director James Comey announced a renewed inquiry about Clinton-related emails. The Florida portion of the poll has a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.
The Connecticut-based Quinnipiac frequently conducts polls in Florida and other swing states. The Florida results released Wednesday follow patterns from earlier polls, with both candidates having high negative numbers, Clinton leading among women and minorities, and Trump leading among men and white voters.
"Racial patterns are clearly evident in the Florida voting," Brown said. "Hillary Clinton is getting about a third of whites in Florida, to Trump's 58 percent. Non-whites, however, break strongly for her."
With 29 electoral votes at stake, Trump, Clinton and high-profile supporters have been traveling throughout Florida in the closing days of the campaign to try to turn out voters. Trump, for example, campaigned Wednesday in Miami and also was scheduled to appear in Orlando and Pensacola. He will go to Jacksonville on Thursday.
Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, campaigned in the state Tuesday, and President Barack Obama is scheduled to campaign for the Democratic nominee Thursday in Miami and Jacksonville.