'October Surprise’ Could Scramble Swing States (Comey knew what he was doing)
(In some battlegrounds, there are unusually large percentages of undecided voters. Could the latest October surprise prod them off the fence?)
The first national polls taken in the immediate aftermath of the election’s latest October surprise suggest it’s having a limited impact on the presidential race so far. But there are a few swing states where the bombshell letter FBI Director James Comey sent to Congress on Friday could still have a disproportionate effect.
Already, the persistent and overriding unpopularity of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had created more volatility than usual for the final week of a presidential campaign — as evidenced by the larger percentages of undecided voters and those backing third-party candidates.
And with Clinton’s email scandal vaulted back into the news by Comey’s ambiguous letter to Congress last week, that instability creates more uncertainty than usual going into the last full week of campaigning across the potentially decisive states in the Electoral College — uncertainty that isn’t uniform across the map.
In the most-contested battleground states, voters have been bombarded with seemingly nonstop television advertisements and ground-game mobilization efforts. In general, polls in these states show fewer undecided voters — though the percentage of voters backing third-party candidates is more variable.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/clinton-huma-abedin-emails-poll-230518#ixzz4Oh4Lt9gt
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