Virtual tie between Trump and Clinton in latest CNN poll
By Results of a new national poll administered by CNN were circulated on August 1. The poll asked interviewees for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
CNN poll results
Of those who replied, 45.0% said that they plan to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 48.0% said that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from July 22 to July 24, among a random sample of 882 participants. There is a sampling error of +/-3.5 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be regarded with caution, since they often include substantial errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, one should use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that incorporates different methods and data.
For the following comparison, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 48.4% for Clinton and 51.6% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Trump is currently at 48.4% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls. In comparison to his numbers in the CNN poll Trump's poll average is 3.2 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote anticipates Trump to gain 48.0% of the two-party vote. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 3.6 points below his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's error margin.
