Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by three points among likely voters in a CBS News-New York Times poll released Thursday, holding 45 percent of the vote to Trump’s 42 percent.
The Libertarian party’s Gary Johnson earned 5 percent and Green Party’s Jill Stein took 4 percent.
These numbers mark a significant improvement for the Republican nominee, who lagged nine points behind Clinton in the previous CBS-NYT poll from mid-October. At the time, Trump was bogged down by news reports about the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about groping women without consent and accusations of unwanted sexual advances made by multiple women.
The race has become much tighter in the past week amid news that the FBI is looking into emails belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin to see if they are related to their investigation into the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server.
Some 62 respondents to the CBS-NYT poll said the FBI news did not change their vote. A majority of Republicans said it made them less likely to vote for Clinton, while most Democrats and independents said it made no difference.
Few voters seem open to changing their minds about the candidates at this late date in the race, with 92 percent saying their opinion is made up.
TPM’s PollTracker Average has Clinton holding a slight lead with 47.6 percent of the vote compared to 45.3 percent for Trump.
The CBS-NYT poll was conducted by telephone Oct. 28-Nov 1, 2016 among 1,561 adults nationwide.
