Ohio: Narrow advantage for Clinton in latest Quinnipiac poll
By Quinnipiac published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Historically, Ohio has been a battleground state, in which neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have had overwhelming support to clinch its electoral college votes. Therefore, predictions in this state are of particular interest.
Quinnipiac poll results
According to the results, 49.0% of participants would give their vote to former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 45.0% would vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 30 to August 7 among 812 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.4 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, one should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they sometimes contain large errors. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 52.1% for Clinton and 47.9% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently runs at 51.5% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Ohio. This value is 0.6 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the Quinnipiac poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 51.0% of the two-party vote in Ohio. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 1.1 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error reveals that this difference is insignificant.
