Trump, Hillary begin final stretch in 2016 race to White House

It's not too late for Trump, but he needs to shine during the upcoming presidential one-on-one presidential debates against Hillary. He not only needs to shine, but he needs to soundly and decisively defeat the Democratic candidate and trip her up on the stump, and cause voters watching nationwide to question her honesty and integrity.

"It is not too late for Trump but he will have to do something in the debates to change the current narrative that she (Hillary) is going to win," West said.

While experts look at the average of many polls to determine which candidate is in the lead, some individual polls have Trump leading Clinton by a small margin.

Indeed, a new CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday found that 45 percent of likely voters back Trump, and 43 percent back Clinton, with the rest supporting a couple of independent party candidates.

Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua that in order to continue to close the gap in the polls, Trump needs to improve his standing among college-educated white voters.

This is a segment that has traditionally been split between Democrats and Republicans, but polls show that Trump is lagging far behind past Republican candidates like Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Certainly, appearing more "presidential" -even tempered and more balanced-will be important for Trump to reach out to this group. However, he continues to double-down on some positions, like immigration, that make it harder for him to continue to reach out to educated voters and other moderates, Mahaffee said.

Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, told Xinhua that Trump needs to secure his position with core Republican voters and he also needs to gain considerable ground in most of the battle ground states by convincing voters that he is capable of governing.

In the final stretch, it is not too late for Trump to win the election, Zelizer said.

"It is not too late and it would be a mistake to discount him," he said.