Ohio: Clinton tied with Trump in latest Suffolk University poll
By Suffolk University released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Ohio is traditionally a swing state, where Democrats and Republicans have historically gained similar levels of voter support. Hence, the election outcome in that state is viewed as critical in determining who will win the majority of electoral votes.
Suffolk University poll results
According to the results, both candidates can draw on equal levels of support, each with 44.0% of the vote.
The poll was carried out from July 18 to July 20 among 500 likely voters. The error margin is +/-4.4 points. This means that the levels of voter support for the candidates of both parties do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, a good strategy is to not put too much trust in the results of a single poll. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, we convert them into shares of the two-party vote. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump concerning the two-party vote share.
Results in comparison to other polls
When compared to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 1.5 percentage points worse in the poll. This margin is outside the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 51.9% and Trump 48.1% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Clinton has 1.9 percentage points less when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast for Ohio. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's margin of error.
