Hillary Clinton holds up to five point lead over Donald Trump two days before election day

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Small but steady. Those might be the words that sum up the lead Hillary Clinton holds in the polls over Donald Trump as the battle for the White House goes down to the wire.

With two days until election day, a flurry of polls gave the Democrat a small but persistent lead over her Republican challenger, as the two candidates continued to hit the battleground states in a frantic hunt for votes.

According to the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday, Ms Clinton is on 44 points, with Mr Trump on 40. Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson was at six per cent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein had two per cent of support.

Those who carried out the poll, said Ms Clinton’s lead had fallen from an 11 point advantage she held over Mr Trump in the middle of October, before the FBI said it was reviewing new emails in its investigation of the former Secretary of State.

Meanwhile, after running even with Donald Trump early last week, Hillary Clinton now holds a five-point lead in the latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll, as well as clear advantages on several personal attributes.

As Mr Trump flew to five states on Sunday, among them Minnesota, a state that has ten electoral votes and where polls suggest he trails Ms Clinton by six points, a final nationwide poll published by news website Politico placed him three points behind his rival – scoring at 45-42. An average of all polls collated by Real Clear Politics gives Ms Clinton a narrower lead – just 1.8 per cent.

The nationwide polls do not tell the entire story of what is happening on the ground in key battleground states. A calculation that takes into account such trends and battles by the FiveThirtyEight statistical website, headed by pollster Nate Silver, gives Ms Clinton a 64.2 per cent chance of securing the White House.

As Mr Trump hit the campaign trail in five states on Sunday, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia, Ms Clinton was limiting her appearances to just two – Ohio and New Hampshire.

In Ohio, she was due to appear alongside LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavalier star, beloved in the state. Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, her campaign was set to be joined by Khizr Khan, the father of slain US army captain Humayun Khan, who died while serving in the 2004 Iraq War and whose clashes with Mr Trump erupted this summer.