Race in dead heat

The race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for the White House has tightened with two months to go before Election Day, as a series of new polls yesterday shows them essentially in a dead heat.

Trump has edged ahead of Clinton in a new CNN/ORC poll, at 45 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, while an NBC News poll of registered voters meanwhile shows Clinton's lead holding at six percentage points -- 48 percent to 42 percent.

And another survey, this one by The Washington Post looking at all 50 states, shows Clinton with a solid lead in terms of electoral college votes, and even strength in some traditional Republican strongholds.

The various polls show how close the race is looking to November 8, and makes the battle for the so-called swing states all the more important.

Clinton was headed to Florida yesterday to appear at a voter registration event, while the billionaire real estate mogul was due in Virginia for a town hall meeting and in North Carolina for an evening campaign rally.

"Thank you! #AmericaFirst," Trump tweeted with the new CNN poll results.

The candidates have less than three weeks to go before the first of three scheduled presidential debates -- expected to be the most watched moments of what so far has been a raucous campaign.

After hinting last month that he might not participate in all of them, Trump told reporters he was on board.

"I expect to do all three," he said.

Clinton on Monday expressed "grave" concern about reports that Russia has been interfering in the US electoral process through invasive cyber attacks on the Democratic Party and an apparent attack on voter registration systems in Arizona.

And she implied Moscow was trying to help get the 70-year-old Trump elected.

In a new twist to his immigration proposals, Trump held out the possibility of legal status for millions of illegal immigrants, but only after many other border enforcement steps are taken.

Trump said parts of his hardline immigration speech last week in Phoenix had been misinterpreted and that he had in fact softened his position to some extent.

Trump has struggled to strike the right tone on how he would take on illegal immigration if elected on Nov 8 After flirting with a softer tone, he stuck to his hardline position in Phoenix last week, saying that anyone in the United States illegally would be subject to deportation.

Meanwhile, Clinton was on Monday forced to dismiss concerns about her health as one of many conspiracy theories that were lobbed against her. She blamed seasonal allergies for a sustained coughing fit at an earlier event in Ohio.