Hillary Clinton has lost 60 electoral votes on the RealClear Politics electoral vote projection in one week: she was at 333 last week; this week she is at 273.
It is enough for her to win – you only need 270 – but with Donald J. Trump at 265, and the wind at his back right now, this race is tightening.
The moving numbers come just days after Clinton was feeling confident enough of her fortunes to spend part of her speeches attacking down-ballot candidates like Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania – all in an effort to nudge a guaranteed Democratic Senate majority.
Clinton began collapsing early last week, mainly on the backs of regular Republican voters "going home" to Trump, despite threats they would not. But a movement against her candidacy intensified last weekend when FBI Director James Comey reopened the email investigation over information found on disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop included emails allegedly tied to her private email server.
Clinton and her surrogates spent most of their time the first couple of days unwisely attacking Comey – making her the center of negative attention – the last story line she should have gone for was defending her own trustworthiness, transparency and ethics for a closing argument.
With only six days left in the presidential race, both Trump and Clinton are working overtime in traditional battleground states, as well as some outliers, to turn out voters and to get to 270.
It remains to be seen if Trump can shift the direction of the race in his favor in the final hours, despite the closeness of the polls.
Trump surrogates, including the candidate himself, have consistently warned the polling data might be wrong in that they have underestimated Trump's support. It is a warning that will only be validated or dismissed by late Tuesday night of next week.
President Barack Obama was taking no chances on what he calls the undoing of everything he has put in place in the past eight years, if Trump would win. So, he took his presidential seal on the road Wednesday, campaigning in North Carolina and speaking on a popular urban radio show.
"If you really care about my presidency and what we've accomplished, you are going to go and vote," Obama said to Tom Joyner on the host's syndicated black radio show.
"If we let this thing slip, and I've got a situation where my last two months in office are preparing for a transition to Donald Trump, whose staff people have said that their primary agenda is to have him, in the first couple of weeks, sit in the Oval Office and reverse every single thing that we've done."
Obama also spoke in Chapel Hill, on the campus of the University of North Carolina, at rally to aggressively persuade college students and black voters to cast their ballot for Clinton.
He'll do the same Thursday in Florida in two of that state's most populist black cities: Jacksonville and Miami.
Trump, for his part, has taken advantage on Clinton's most recent fall from grace on honesty, keeping his message on his role as the underdog in the race and sticking to the tangible "Make America Great" benefit message that resonates with voters in this change election cycle.
Trump warned a large crowd of supporters Wednesday in Miami the polls all say they are going win in Florida, but he is suspect of the numbers.
"Don't believe it. Get out there and vote," he said. "Pretend we're slightly behind. You gotta get out. We don't wanna blow this."
While Clinton is slightly ahead in the Electoral College numbers, the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll Wednesday shows Clinton and Trump both at 46 percent. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson is at 3 percent, Green Party candidate Jill Stein is at 2 percent and another 3 percent are undecided.
Salena Zito covers national politics for Newsmax.
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