Donald Trump appears to have bounced back from trailing numbers in the polls, with his first lead in a national poll following the various scandals that have dogged him over the past two weeks.

In the latest national four-way poll by Rasmussen Reports, Trump is now leading Hillary Clinton by two points, with a total of 43 to her 41, while Gary Johnson is on six points and Jill Stein is on two.

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A national two-way poll by LA Times/USC tracking has Clinton and Trump on equal footing, which shows a marked difference from polls released at the beginning of the week, in which Clinton was leading Trump by as much as 14 points.

Trump had suffered several setbacks on the campaign trail that were reflected in the polls, including accusations he had not paid certain taxes for 18 years, leaked footage from 2005 that showed him making lewd comments about groping women, and allegations published by The New York Times by women who accused the GOP nominee of assault.

Trump, who has dismissed the allegations as "ludicrous", has since seen election rhetoric revolve around the women's allegations, also addressing them during the second presidential debate and suggesting the topic was distraction from the real issues of the day.

However, national averages still have Clinton in the lead, while the LA Times poll has been questioned, as it often shows Trump leading where others have shown the opposite - due to the different methods it uses to take polling data.

"A lot of readers have noticed that our USC/Los Angeles Times Daybreak tracking poll is different from other polls," explained David Lauter, LA Times/Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau chief last weekend, as he answered questions in a story about why their poll is an outlier.

The poll tracks 3,000 voters each day until election day. The other difference is in the questions it asks.

"The Daybreak poll asks people to estimate, on a scale of 0 to 100, how likely they are to vote for each of the two major candidates," wrote Lauter. The estimates are then combined to make the daily forecast.

However, this poll had the most accurate margin in predicting the Obama win in 2012, so it is not wise to dismiss anything as impossible in the run-up to November.

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