WASHINGTON _ FBI Director James Comey's November surprise Sunday likely halted any late surge by Donald Trump, but it's also highly likely it came too late to provide much help to Hillary Clinton.
"Comey's most recent update is likely too little, too late to blunt the bulk of damage to the Clinton campaign in most swing states," said Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll in North Carolina, one of the nation's key battlegrounds.
More than 41 million people have already voted nationwide, according to data complied by the U.S. Elections Project. In North Carolina, 44 percent of registered voters have already cast ballots, and similar heavy turnouts have been reported in other pivotal states.
At this point, the Comey news "will likely only impact the decisions of the largely undecided voters who both follow news very closely and have yet to early vote. This is a very small group," Husser said.
Comey jolted the presidential race Sunday for the second time in 10 days when he told congressional leaders that the FBI stands by its position against recommending charges against Clinton in connection with her private email server.
The chief political impact is likely to be stopping Trump's momentum. The Republicans will have a difficult time pivoting and making Comey a villain again, said Spencer Kimball, adviser to the Emerson College Polling Society in Boston, which surveys several battleground states.
"Trump will have difficulty spinning this as a positive for his campaign," Kimball said.
Trump had charged a "rigged system" after Comey's original recommendation that Clinton not be charged. Then after Comey announced Oct. 28 that the FBI was taking "additional investigative steps" involving the emails, Trump said Comey had "guts."
Momentum was building against Clinton, as conservative commentators and websites then suggested that indictments were possible. The benefit she received earlier last month when multiple women accused Trump of sexual assault after the release of a decade-old video in which he bragged about groping women nearly evaporated.
Republicans vowed to keep pushing the idea that Clinton can't be trusted. "The FBI's findings from its criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton's secret email server were a damning and unprecedented indictment of her judgment," said party Chairman Reince Priebus. "The FBI found evidence Clinton broke the law, that she placed highly classified national security information at risk and repeatedly lied to the American people about her reckless conduct."
He knows Clinton is dogged by an image fixed in voters' minds long ago. A total of 83 percent told the McClatchy-Marist Poll released Friday that Clinton did something wrong. Fifty-one percent said she did something illegal and 32 percent saying she something unethical but not illegal. Just 14 percent said she's done nothing wrong.
Comey's initial announcement reshaped the race, and Republicans analysts Sunday were wary that Clinton had time to gain significantly.
"Millions of voters have cast their ballots in the interim, and this latest letter can't turn that around," said GOP pollster Neil Newhouse.
Democratic pollster Mark Mellman called Comey's letter "welcome news," but said the Sunday announcement "remains a classic instance of ' too little too late.""
Trump supporters waiting to see him in Loudon County, Virginia, were both furious at Comey and skeptical that the FBI had actually read the emails. The news only solidified their belief that Clinton and the federal government are corrupt.
They were standing outside chanting "Lock her up" more than three hours before Trump was scheduled to arrive. "He's spineless, gutless," Jimmy Lewis, a Loudon county business owner, said of Comey. "I think somebody probably got to him. You don't open up 650,000 emails and not find anything new."
"We have seen Director Comey's latest letter to the Hill," Clinton campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said. "We are glad to see that he has found, as we were confident that he would, that he has confirmed the conclusion that he reached in July, and we're glad that this matter is resolved."
