Clinton, Trump clash over economy in closing campaign stretch

With four days left in an often bitter contest that has tightened considerably in the last week, each candidate attacked the other as unfit to be president in a late push for votes in battleground states that could decide the outcome in Tuesday’s election. 

Clinton leads Trump by 5 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll released on Friday, maintaining her advantage in the national survey even as the race tightens in several crucial swing states. In the October 30-November 3 opinion poll, 44 per cent of likely voters supported Clinton while 39 per cent supported Trump. 

At a rally in Pittsburgh, Clinton cited the government’s latest jobs report as evidence of the economy’s strength. The report showed higher wages for workers as well as the creation of 161,000 jobs in October and a fall in the unemployment rate to 4.9 per cent from 5 per cent. “I believe our economy is poised to really take off and thrive,” Clinton told the gathering, after being introduced by billionaire investor Mark Cuban. “When the middle class thrives, America thrives.”

Trump disputed Clinton’s rosy view, telling a crowd in New Hampshire that the jobs report was ‘an absolute disaster’ and was skewed by the large number of people who have stopped looking for jobs and are no longer in the labour market. 

“Nobody believes the numbers anyway. The numbers they put out are phony,” he said of the figures released by the Labour Department at a rally in Atkinson.