ABC-Washington Post Poll: Clinton, Trump in Dead Heat

Presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are in a "dead heat" according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll, released early Wednesday.

Each had 46% of likely voters, compared to Clinton's 50% to Trump's 38% only Oct. 23. A majority of voters (55%) still expect Clinton to win, but that was down 5 points from last week.

The closeness of that poll was drawing a lot of attention, coming only days after FBI director James Comey made the controversial call to publicly announce the bureau was looking at some new e-mails—from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin—that might be relevant to its previously closed investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server.

Six out of ten likely voters disapproved of the way Clinton had responded to the email issue.

But ABC also pointed out that Mitt Romney was ahead of Barack Obama in a similar 2012 tracking poll a week before the election, as was John Kerry versus George Bush.

The survey found Clinton had lost ground in the "more honest than Trump" department, down 14 points with independents, 13 points with moderates and 10 points with Democrats, which could be related to the Comey announcement, ABC said.

The poll was conducted by landline and cell phone Oct. 28-31 in both English and Spanish among a random sample of 1,182 likely voters. the margin of error is plus or minus three points.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.