Ohio: New QuinnipiacQuinnipiac poll shows Clinton with 4 points lead
By Results of a new poll carried out by QuinnipiacQuinnipiac were released. The poll asked participants from Ohio for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
In Ohio, the popular vote is often close. Therefore, the state is commonly considered a purple state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
QuinnipiacQuinnipiac poll results
Of those who answered the question, 49.0% said that they plan to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 45.0% declared that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted between July 30 and August 7. The sample size was 812 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-3.4 points, which means that the poll results for the two candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they often contain large errors. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can convert them into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields figures of 52.1% for Clinton and 47.9% for Trump. In the latest QuinnipiacQuinnipiac poll on August 9 Clinton received only 50.0%, while Trump received 50.0%.
Results vs. other polls
If we look at an average of Ohio polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 51.5%. This value is 0.6 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the QuinnipiacQuinnipiac poll. This deviation is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 51.0% of the two-party vote in Ohio. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 1.1 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's error margin.
