Iowa: Trump and Clinton virtually tied in new DeSart model
The DeSart model enters the econometric models component of the PollyVote. It currently forecasts a two-party vote share of 50.6% for Clinton and 49.4% for Trump in Iowa.
Iowa is traditionally a swing state, where the Democratic and Republican candidates have historically won similar levels of support among voters. Hence, the election outcome in that state is regarded critical in determining the overall result of the presidential election.
Putting the results in context
Individual econometric models may incorporate large biases, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. At the very least, one should examine how a econometric model's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
Results compared to other econometric models
If we look at an average of Iowa econometric models, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 52.5%. In comparison to her numbers in the DeSart model Clinton's econometric model average is 1.9 percentage points better.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The results of the DeSart model for Clinton are thus 0.6 percentage points below the combined PollyVote, which at the moment predicts a value of 51.2% in Iowa.