• by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, October 31, 2016

FBI Director Comey’s three-paragraph letter sent to the U.S. Congress on Friday concerning the investigation into the Clinton email server has changed the state of the race. It is likely to set the tone through Election Day.

As Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report pointed out, this election has a consistent trend: “When the spotlight is on one candidate, it benefits the other candidate. So when we’re talking about Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers come up. When we talk about Hillary Clinton, his numbers get better.”

In the closing days of the election, the focus will be on Hillary Clinton and the FBI, not about Trump and his fitness to serve as president. That is, unless some other bombshell comes to light.

Donald Trump’s chances of being elected President of the United States have risen from about one in six, to one in four according to FiveThirtyEight, in the few days since the now infamous Comey letter. What is yet to be understood is what the full fallout of the letter will be. Voters are unlikely to receive any more information about these emails before voting.

The new emails were found on a laptop, jointly used by Anthony Weiner and his now estranged wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, that may be pertinent to the Clinton email investigation. They could very well be duplicates of the tens of thousands of emails already in the FBI’s possession.

The Justice Department just got a warrant to read the emails on Sunday night. It is hard to believe investigators can do all the due diligence needed to write a detailed report by November 8.

Hillary Clinton and her supporters quickly went on the offensive. In fact, there is reason to believe that Comey’s letter violates the Hatch Act, which precludes the FBI from influencing an election.

The exact timing is also curious, as reports say the FBI found these new emails weeks ago, but waited until Friday to make them public.

Also, in a strange turn of events highlighting the FBI's independence, the Justice Department apparently suggested to Comey and the FBI last Thursday that releasing the letter was contrary to existing policy. 

Regardless, the Clinton camp was already facing a barrage of bad news before the FBI letter. Polls in a couple swing states had been narrowing, other emails from Wikileaks put to light a very cozy relationship between President Bill Clinton’s personal speaking engagements and the activities of the Clinton Foundation. To make things worse, the White House announced that Affordable Care Act premiums in 2017 would increase by 25%.

The fundamentals for Clinton are still strong. With early voting already well on its way, and powerfully ingrained partisanship, it is unlikely that the new Comey letter will have a drastic effect on the polls. Clinton will want to shift the conversation back onto Trump in the closing days, rather than have the media continually litigating how damaging Comey’s comments could be.

We will know in a couple of days what real impact, if any, this last week of October will have on the race. Preliminary polling shows that voters are not swayed by Comey’s letter.

“It is unlikely that there will be a dramatic shift in the polls before Election Day,” according to Kyle Dropp, CRO and co-founder of Morning Consult, a firm that polled voters jointly with Politico after Friday. “While Friday’s news may be considered an ‘October Surprise,’ it doesn’t seem to be moving the needle as of now.”

Dare I ask, are there any November surprises in the works?