Race to White House in dead heat, Trump edges ahead of Clinton in latest poll

With barely two months to go for the US presidential election, the race to the White House appears to have entered dead heat, with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump edging out his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the latest national poll. Trump now has the support of 45 per cent of the prospective general election voters against Clinton's 43 per cent in the poll carried out by CNN/ORC.

Libertarian Gary Johnson has support of seven per cent of likely voters and Green Party’s Jill Stein has just two per cent, according to the poll.

This is for the first time after the two back-to-back conventions that Trump is seen leading in a major national poll, albeit by a small margin.

For a few weeks after the conventions, Clinton’s lead over the 70-year-old real estate tycoon was nearly 10 percentage points. Trump made course correction by appointing a new campaign head, giving policy speeches and delivering his remarks from teleprompters.

According to RealClearPolitics.Com, which keeps track of all major national polls, Clinton maintains an average lead of 3.3 percentage points. This was around eight per cent about five weeks ago.

Most recently, Clinton’s convention propelled her to an 8-point lead among registered voters in an early-August CNN/ORC poll.

But most voters say they still expect to see Clinton prevail in November, and 59 per cent think she will be the one to get to 270 electoral votes versus 34 per cent who think Trump has the better shot at winning, CNN said.

Meanwhile, a separate NBC News poll released on Tuesday hours later showed Clinton with a six point lead over Trump.

In a one-to-one contest, Clinton is favoured by 48 per cent of the registered voters, while Trump has the support of 42 per cent, NBC News/Survey Monkey weekly poll said.

However, in a four-way match that includes Johnson (12 per cent) and Stein (four per cent), Clinton (41 per cent) has a four-point lead over Trump (37 per cent).