Ohio: Clinton tied with Trump in latest Suffolk University poll

Suffolk University released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Ohio is traditionally a purple state, where the Republican and Democratic candidates have often achieved similar levels of voter support. Hence, the election outcome in that state is viewed as important in determining who will win the majority of electoral votes.

The results show that former New York Senator Hillary Clinton and billionaire Donald Trump can draw on equal levels of support, each with 44.0% of the vote.

This poll was conducted from July 18 to July 20, among a random sample of 500 likely voters. The error margin is +/-4.4 points, which means that the levels of voter support for both parties' candidates do not differ significantly.

Putting the results in context

Single polls may contain large errors, and should be treated with caution. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that includes forecasts from different methods, each of which includes different data.

In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can convert them into two-party vote shares. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump concerning the two-party vote share.

Results vs. other polls

In comparison to the average results of other polls Clinton performed worse with 1.5 percentage points, while Trump did better with 1.5 percentage points. This margin is outside the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is an outlier.

Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction

The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 51.0% and Trump 49.0% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Clinton has 1.0 percentage points less and Trump has 1.0 percentage points more when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast for Ohio. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's margin of error.

This article was automatically generated by the PollyBot, which uses algorithms developed by AX Semantics to generate text from data stored in our API. The exact dataset underlying this particular article can be found here.

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