Ohio: 5 points lead for Clinton in latest NBC-WSJ-Marist poll
By NBC-WSJ-Marist published the results of a new poll. In this poll, participants from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Historically, Ohio has been a battleground state, in which neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has had overwhelming support to clinch that state's electoral college votes. This is the reason why predictions here are of particular interest.
NBC-WSJ-Marist poll results
The poll was conducted from August 3 to August 7 with 889 registered voters. Taking into account the poll's error margin of +/-3.3 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be treated with caution, as they can incorporate 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 yields figures of 46.9% for Clinton and 0.0% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton currently runs at 48.5% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Ohio. This value is 1.6 percentage points higher than corresponding numbers in the NBC-WSJ-Marist poll. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The latest PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 48.1% of the two-party vote in Ohio. This means that the PollyVote is 1.2 points above polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error reveals that this difference is insignificant.
