Trump targets Democratic strongholds in final campaign blitz

Donald Trump turned his focus to Democratic strongholds in the midwest at the weekend as he sought to open new routes to the 270 electoral votes required to win the election.

The Republican nominee scheduled a late campaign stop in Minnesota, a state that has voted for Democrats in every presidential election since 1984, and visited a number of other states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia, that opinion polls suggest are leaning towards Hillary Clinton.

Mr Trump's campaign portrayed the move as a sign of their candidate's bullishness, arguing Mrs Clinton remained vulnerable in apparently safe states, but many analysts saw the shift as proof that Mr Trump was being forced to widen his search for potential victories after polls and early voting tallies showed him facing an uphill struggle in Nevada and other key targets.

Opinion polls show Mrs Clinton still holds advantages in states that could be critical in deciding the election, although her lead has narrowed in the past week. A Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll on Saturday showed the Democrat ahead by four percentage points nationally, while an ABC News-Washington Post tracking poll had her ahead by 48 per cent to 43 per cent.

Targeted appearances

While Mr Trump prefers large-scale rallies, Mrs Clinton has filled her campaign schedule with targeted appearances meant to court voters in specific demographics. She addressed voters of Cuban and Haitian origin in Florida on Saturday, while President

Barack Obama

campaigned in the

Orlando

area, a vital battleground region where black and Latino voters could make the difference.

The Clinton strategy in Florida hinges on going into election day on Tuesday with a lead in early voting, which ended in the state on Sunday evening. But the Republicans believe they can still claim the state's 29 electoral votes, and visits by Mr Trump to Tampa on Saturday and Sarasota on Monday are aimed at mobilising conservatives in vital swing counties.

Meanwhile, last-minute revelations still held the potential to throw the campaigns off-track. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company that owns the National Enquirer magazine paid a former Playboy Playmate of the Year $150,000 to keep quiet about an affair she reportedly had with the property magnate in 2006 and 2007, after he married his third wife, Melania. Its chairman and chief executive officer, David Pecker, is a long-time Trump friend. Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks denied the affair claim as "totally untrue".

Separately, the Associated Press news agency reported that Melania Trump was paid for 10 modelling jobs in the United States in 1996 before obtaining the necessary documents to legally work in the country. Mrs Trump, who received a green card in March 2001 and became a US citizen in 2006, has always maintained that she arrived in the country legally and never violated the terms of her immigration status. During the presidential campaign, she has cited her story to defend her husband's hard line on immigration.

For its part, the Trump campaign seized on a batch of new Clinton emails released by Wikileaks, saying they showed Mrs Clinton routinely asked her housekeeper to print out emails and documents, including ones containing classified information.