Ohio: Small advantage for Clinton in new NBC-WSJ-Marist poll
By Results of a new poll conducted by NBC-WSJ-Marist were distributed. The poll asked participants from Ohio for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Ohio is traditionally a battleground state, where the two major political parties have often achieved similar voter support. Therefore, the election outcome in that state is viewed as crucial in determining the overall result of the presidential election.
NBC-WSJ-Marist poll results
Of those who responded, 43.0% said that they are going to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 38.0% revealed that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 3 to August 7. A total of 889 registered voters responded. If one takes into account the poll's margin of error of +/-3.3 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls can contain large errors, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, we translate them into two-party vote shares. The respective figures are 53.1% for Clinton and 46.9% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently runs at 51.5% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Ohio. Relative to her numbers in the NBC-WSJ-Marist poll Clinton's poll average is 1.6 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The latest PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 51.0% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Hence, the combined PollyVote is 2.1 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error indicates that this difference is insignificant.
