US election: Clinton’s celebrity superstar onslaught gives Trump the blues

Hillary Clinton looks exhausted and has almost lost her voice but she has slowed Donald Trump’s momentum.

Beyonce and Jay Z perform in support of Hillary Clinton in Cleveland.

Hillary Clinton looks exhausted and has almost lost her voice but she has slowed Donald Trump’s momentum, and it might just be enough for her to take the keys to the Oval Office this week.

Clinton answered the Trump onslaught over the weekend with an all-star counter-attack.

There was Barack Obama in Florida, Bill and Chelsea Clinton in North Carolina, Beyonce and Jay Z in Ohio, Cher and Bon Jovi in Florida, Katy Perry and Stevie Wonder in Pennsylvania.

It was all too much for Trump, who told a rally in the chocolate town of Hershey, Pennsylvania: “I am here all by myself, just me, no guitar, no piano, no nothing.”

The Real Clear Politics poll ­average had Clinton’s national lead edge up from 1.3 to 1.7 points, including a reversal in the must-win state of Florida, where she now leads by a slender 1.2 points after being slightly down late last week.

These are narrow margins and Trump can still win the US presidency, but his surge has been ­stymied for the first time since the FBI investigation announced a ­renewed probe into the Clinton email scandal nine days ago.

Trump was down by about seven points before the FBI controversy, but stormed back into contention late last week.

Yet if the election were held today, he would lose. The US electoral map needs to fall for Trump in a perfect, sequential order, like a long line of dominoes. If one domino fails to fall, then ­neither does Clinton.

GRAPHIC: US election

Both candidates are crisscrossing the US, calculators in hand, trying to work out how to reach the 270 electoral college votes needed to win.

For Clinton, the figures are not so hard. To get home she just needs to stand firm in one of the big swing states — a Florida, Pennsylvania or a North Carolina — and she will block Trump’s path to Washington.

For Trump, the calculations are headache-inducing. He needs to win all the big swing states of Flor­ida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania while also stealing several traditional Democrat strongholds.

That’s why the Trump roadshow is heading to Michigan, which hasn’t voted Republican since 1984, and Minnesota, which last voted Republican in 1972, during the Vietnam War.

It’s optimistic but the Trump camp often speaks about “the ­silent majority”, the group of possibly mythical Trump supporters who they say have not shown up in the polls but will storm the ballot boxes tomorrow.

These folks are mostly white males and Trump believes more of them are out there.

Clinton is pitching to her own coalition of Latinos and African-Americans, who hold a special ­dislike of Trump, as well as women and young voters — hence her ­reliance on celebrities.

In the final hours of this most absurd presidential campaign, Clinton’s Hollywood A-listers may have sealed the defeat of the reality-TV star.