Republican Donald Trump had one last chance at a nationally televised debate to reach out to the undecided voters he badly needs to keep his presidential campaign viable. “When you’re trailing in the polls, you don’t need a headline the next morning saying that you’re not going to accept the election results,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist who supports Trump. Party strategists had said before the debate that he needed to use the event to draw in voters beyond his hard-core supporters. “The risk he faces by engaging in a scorched-earth policy is that he activates people rather than turning them off,” said Michael McDonald, who runs the US Election Project at the University of Florida. If Trump’s core white, male, working class supporters vote at high rates, as expected, that likely won’t be enough to win.

Source: Hindustan Times October 20, 2016 07:41 UTC