South Carolina: Clinton and Trump virtually tied in latest PPP (D) poll
By Results of a new poll carried out by PPP (D) were released. The poll asked interviewees from South Carolina for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
PPP (D) poll results
Of those who replied, 39.0% said that they would vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 41.0% revealed that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 9 to August 10. A total of 1290 registered voters responded. There is a sampling error of +/-2.7 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be interpreted with caution, since they can incorporate substantial biases. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 48.8% for Clinton and 51.3% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of South Carolina polls, Trump's current two-party vote share is at 51.1%. This value is 0.3 percentage points lower than his respective numbers in the PPP (D) poll. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Trump to gain 53.8% of the two-party vote in South Carolina. This means that the combined PollyVote is 2.5 points above his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's sampling error.
