Virginia: Trump and Clinton neck-and-neck in latest DeSart model
The DeSart model released an updated prediction of the election result. The model predicts that Clinton will achieve 49.5% of the two-party vote share in Virginia, whereas Trump will end up with 50.5%.
Historically, Virginia has been a battleground state, in which neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has had overwhelming support to secure that state's electoral college votes. Therefore, predictions in this state are of particular interest.
Putting the results in context
Individual econometric models should be interpreted with caution, as they can incorporate large biases. Instead of relying on results from single econometric models, we recommend to use combined econometric models or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that relies on forecasts from different methods, each of which relies on different data.
Comparison to other econometric models
Trump currently runs at 53.1% of the two-party vote in an average of recent econometric models in Virginia. In comparison to his numbers in the DeSart model Trump's econometric model average is 2.6 percentage points higher.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
PollyVote currently predicts Trump to gain 50.1% of the two-party vote in Virginia, which is 0.4 percentage points below the results of the DeSart model. In comparison, a look at the PollyVote national prediction for Trump shows that the actual results are 2.5 percentage points higher.