Ohio: Clinton tied with Trump in new PPP (D) poll
By PPP (D) released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
In Ohio, the popular vote is usually decided by a narrow margin. This is the reason why the state is commonly considered a battleground state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
PPP (D) poll results
According to the results, the two candidates have identical levels of support, each with 45.0% of the vote.
The poll was carried out between July 22 and July 24. The sample size was 1334 registered voters. If one takes into account the poll's sampling error of +/-2.7 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they can contain large errors. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can convert them into two-party vote shares. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump for the two-party vote share.
Results compared to 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 margin of error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
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. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error indicates that this deviation is significant.
