Ohio: Clinton with slim lead in recent NBC-WSJ-Marist poll
By NBC-WSJ-Marist published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Historically, Ohio has been a purple state, in which neither the GOP nor the Democrats have had overwhelming support to secure that state's electoral college votes. Therefore, forecasts in this state are of particular value.
NBC-WSJ-Marist poll results
Of those who replied, 43.0% said that they intend to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 38.0% revealed that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from August 3 to August 7, among a random sample of 889 registered voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.3 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be interpreted with caution, because they can include substantial biases. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 53.1% for Clinton and 46.9% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
Clinton can currently count on 51.5% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Ohio. This value is 1.6 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the NBC-WSJ-Marist poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 51.0% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Hence, the PollyVote forecast is 2.1 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin suggests that this deviation is insignificant.
