Clinton, Trump duel in must-win states in tight race

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump squared off on Thursday in do-or-die North Carolina with duelling rallies in the home stretch of a bitter, hard-fought US presidential race that is tightening by the day.

As the candidates jostle and joust for supremacy in the handful of battleground states that will decide the Nov 8 election, two of the biggest prizes on the electoral map, Florida and North Carolina, have narrowed into absolute dead heats, according to RealClearPolitics poll aggregates.

Democrat Clinton unleashed top surrogates including President Barack Obama to bolster her case in the election's homestretch, while Republican Trump deployed wife Melania to soften his image.

North Carolina was suddenly in the eye of the political storm, with the candidates frantically criss-crossing the southeastern state where they are locked at 46.4 percent apiece in the polls.

"You've got to get everyone you know to come out and vote," Clinton implored supporters in Raleigh, joined by her onetime primary adversary Senator Bernie Sanders.

A nationwide CBS/New York Times survey showed Clinton's lead shrinking to three points, at 45 percent against Trump's 42 percent, a sign the bombastic mogul is winning over once-wary Republican voters.

Trump was scheduled to head on Friday to New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania, while Clinton stumped in Ohio and Michigan.

Pennsylvania is clearly a firewall for Clinton; a Trump win there would be a giant step toward his becoming the 45th president.

'Coming home'

Melania Trump, the Slovenian-born former model who could become the country's first foreign-born first lady in two centuries, also chose Pennsylvania on Thursday for her first solo campaign appearance.

"He certainly knows how to shake things up, doesn't he?" she said of Trump's incendiary campaign.

Trump's third wife insisted her husband, with whom she lives in opulence, was running to improve the lives of suffering workers, struggling parents and children.

Despite the Manhattan mogul's boasts about sexual assault and allegations of groping by several women, white women are evenly split between the candidates, the CBS poll showed.

As the race nears its conclusion, profound Republican skepticism about Trump's controversial candidacy appears to be ebbing.

"I think Republicans are coming home," congressman Jason Chaffetz told CNN.