The ABC/Washington Post poll results are in and it seems the recently reopened — then quickly closed again — FBI investigation rightfully took it’s toll on Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers. Hillary Clinton saw her dominating 13 point lead dwindle down to a near tie. Langer Research has announced that Donald Trump has re-taken the lead for the first time since May.

This is the same poll that was effectively confirmed to be tampering with sampling groups to show Hillary Clinton ahead, therefore she might be further back then the numbers show. Vote preferences have held steady for the most part with Hillary Clinton now trailing Donald Trump by less then one point. In the most recent ABC news/Washington Post tracking poll 46 percent of likely voters support Donald Trump, while only 45 percent back Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Gary Johnson’s poll numbers have hit a new low at only 3 percent, which has him one up over Jill Stein.

According to ABC, enthusiasm for Hillary has tapered since the FBI reopened the email investigation. The over-sampling of Democrats in the poll has risen to 10 points. According to the poll, Republicans are outnumbered by self identified Democrats by that margin. Despite the larger number of Democrats, there’s a few reasons why the race is close.

Although Independent candidates account for around 7 percent of likely voters, Donald Trump has a pure advantage over them. He also wins 9 percent of Democrats while only 6 percent of Republicans support Hillary. Narrow it down to a 5 point gap at 48-43 percent including independents leaning towards one of the two partys.

In contests as close as this one, the small things can make the difference. In 23 likely voter models featuring 43 to 81 percent of the voting age population, 17 of them had Donald Trump at 46-45 over Clinton. Those numbers remained unchanged when taking the average of all 23 models.

Donald Trump as a result leads Hilary by 8 points amongst enthusiastic voters as of last week. Although both have low numbers compared to past elections. 53 percent for Donald Trump and 45 percent for Hillary Clinton. Strong enthusiasm for Hillary fell 7 points since tracking began with the majority of the decline occurring between Friday and Sunday after the investigation was re-opened. Donald Trump’s strong enthusiasts have remained steady since October 20th when tracking began. The 1-point battle is now well within the survey sampling margin of error.

Vote preference results a week before the election are not necessarily indicative of the final outcome although the race appears to be close enough to keep both parties afloat.

Sources:

ZeroHedge.com

TalkingPointsMemo.com