By GABBY MORRONGIELLO • 9/21/16 3:59 PM

With national polls tightening and the first presidential debate fast-approaching, a confident Donald Trump predicted Wednesday that a sweeping electoral victory will carry him to the White House in November.

Trump still faces a narrow path to 270 electoral votes, with major battleground states like Florida and Ohio becoming must-wins for his campaign, but the Republican presidential hopeful hit his highest point yet in an election forecast by respected statistician Nate Silver earlier this week. Silver gave Trump a 44.5 percent chance of defeating Hillary Clinton on Election Day.

"On Nov. 8, we can finally close the history book on her legacy of failure and turn the page to a bright and shining future," Trump said of Clinton during his afternoon rally in Toledo, Ohio. "All we have to do is turn out the doubters, the cynics and the naysayers, of which we have a lot of them.

"We are a nation of strivers, dreamers and believers, and that's the spirit we will carry right into November — Nov. 8 to be specific," he told the crowd. "We are going to have a great, great monumental victory."

Trump, who was introduced at the rally by retired Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight, has worked hard to mount a comeback and close the polling gap between him and Clinton since Labor Day.

While his Democratic opponent has kept a light schedule due to her ongoing recovery from pneumonia, Trump has averaged one to two rallies each day and participated in sit-down discussions with leaders of the communities he has visited.

After trailing Clinton by 6 percentage points in mid-August, after both parties' national conventions, the current RealClearPolitics national polling average shows the former secretary of state leading Trump by just 1.1 percentage points.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/as...rticle/2602475