Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s national lead over her Republican rival Donald Trump has shrunk to 2 points with the Election Day just 10 days away, a new poll shows.
The former secretary of state has the support of 47 percent of likely voters, while the billionaire businessman has 45 percent support, according to the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll released on Saturday.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post cited unnamed senior Justice Department officials as saying that FBI’s decision to notify Congress of new probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server “was not consistent with long-standing practices of the department,”
“Director (James) Comey understood our position. He heard it from Justice leadership,” the official said, according to the Post. “It was conveyed to the FBI, and Comey made an independent decision to alert the Hill. He is operating independently of the Justice Department. And he knows it.”
Earlier, in a memo to FBI employees soon after he sent his letter to Congress, Comey said he felt “an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.”
“Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record,” Comey wrote to his employees, explaining the decision, as reported by the Post.
Analysts say the revelation of the latest probe might shape the campaign.
Only a week ago Clinton was holding a 12-point lead over Trump nationally in the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll.
Since that time, she has lost three points while her opponent has gained seven points, as core Republican groups have returned to Trump’s fold.
However, according to the poll, 59 of likely voters still expect Clinton to win the November 8 election.
The survey was conducted Monday through Thursday among 1,148 likely voters, and it has a margin of error of three points.
Interestingly, the poll was taken before Friday’s exposure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating new emails sent by Clinton on a private server during her time as secretary of state.
On Friday, the FBI rocked the US presidential race by stating that more emails pertaining to its investigation of Clinton’s server had been discovered.
FBI Director James Comey said the bureau was taking “appropriate investigative steps.”
The Democratic nominee underwent a long-running federal investigation over her use of a private email server that involved exchanging thousands of potentially classified emails during her tenure as secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. She was cleared of all charges later on.
Trump celebrated Comey’s announcement on Friday, hailing the FBI’s “courage to right the horrible mistake that they made.”
“This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood, and it is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected,” he said.
