Virtual tie between Clinton and Trump in latest Economist poll
By Economist published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, participants were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Economist poll results
This poll was conducted from July 30 to August 1, among a random sample of 933 participants. There is a sampling error of +/-4.1 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Thus, as a general rule, a good strategy is to not be overly confident the results of an individual poll. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, the recommended strategy consult combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that draws upon forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, one can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 51.7% for Clinton and 48.3% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
In comparison to the average results of other polls Clinton performed better with 42.0 percentage points, while Trump did worse with 42.0 percentage points.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 52.5% and Trump 47.5% of the two-party vote. Clinton has 0.8 percentage points less and Trump has 0.8 percentage points more when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error suggests that this difference is significant.
