Daily Times

WASHINGTON: The Americans cast votes tomorrow to elect their 45th president, as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton maintains an overall lead of 5 points against her Republican rival Donald Trump.

All important survey polls in the United States have declared her ahead of Trump. Newspapers such as New York Times and Washington Post have written editorials urging the voters to elect Clinton.

“Averting the worst effects of this year’s political storm means electing Hillary Clinton,” wrote NYT in its latest editorial. Given his unpopular personality and brash statements, Trump already annoyed a large section of the US media.

More than 30 million voters have already cast their votes in the early voting. In the US, the voters can cast their votes before the actual Election Day that is November 8. Historically, the early voting suited the Democratic candidates. The reports suggest that Clinton would also get late support of majority Latinos, who were wary of Trump’s vision for the immigrants. Latinos form the largest diaspora in America.

Clinton seems to be in a comfortable position to become first woman president of the US. She had an impressive political profile being the first lady, senator and secretary of state. She maintains a five-point lead over Trump, nationally.

Survey polls in the US are considered very accurate. However, they are no guarantee that a candidate enjoying slight lead before an election would actually win the election. For instance, in October 2012, Republican candidate Mitt Romney was 7 points ahead of President Barak Obama. The late efforts by Obama and his team had earned them another four years at the White House.

Several scandals of both the candidate surfaced during the campaign. Trump was accused of groping women, evading tax and having close ties with Russian businessmen. He also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong leader – some highly unpopular in the US. The Republican candidate also refused to release his tax returns, despite frequent demands from the Democrats and other sections of society.

Clinton faced the allegations of representing the elites. Trump called her a representative of same corrupt political culture that plagued the US for too long. Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced to reopen investigation against her that she might have breached the national security by using private email server to send thousands of official and secret emails.

The average Americans, whom Daily Times talked to over the past several days, said they would be happier if Bernie Sander would have been nominated by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) instead of Clinton. Similarly, they believed Clinton would not stand a chance to win if the Republican National Committee (RNC) nominated Jeb Bush instead.

The two candidates jointly raised and spent almost $2 billion to run better campaigns. Clinton’s total war chest contained $1.3 billion of which her campaign directly raised $556 million, party and joint fundraising committees raised $544.4 million and Super PACs raised $188 million.

Super PACs are a type of independent political action committees, in the US, which may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, and individuals but are not permitted to contribute to or coordinate directly with parties or candidates.

Trump had $795 million to go into the election of which his campaign directly raised $248.3 million, party and joint fundraising committees raised $486.7 million and Super PACs raised $60.1 million.

Both candidates spent more than 90 percent of the funds raised.

“Enthusiasm for Clinton and Trump now stands at rough parity, both significantly lower than it was among supporters of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney four years ago,” wrote The Washington Post. But Clinton has a clear advantage in affirmative support, with 55 percent of her backers saying the main reason they are voting for her is because they support her, compared with 43 percent of Trump voters. More Trump voters say they are voting for him mainly because they oppose Clinton.

In the final survey polls, Clinton’s prospects looked better than the last week. She was up three points in a CBS News/New York Times poll, two points in a Fox News poll, one point in a McClatchy-Marist poll and tied in the IBD/TIPP daily poll, released on Saturday.

More voters prefer Clinton’s personality and temperament and say she has better qualifications for the job than Trump. In the last stretch of their respective campaigns, both the candidates are focusing on 15 key swing states which will decide the election.

ABC News rated 15 states and two congressional districts as being in-play on Election Day which may either lean to Democrats or Republicans. These states total 184 electoral votes, more than enough to swing the election to either Clinton or Trump.