Ohio: Clinton tied with Trump in new 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: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Historically, Ohio has been a purple state, in which neither the GOP nor the Democrats have had overwhelming support to clinch that state's electoral college votes. Hence, predictions here are of particular interest.
Suffolk University poll results
The results show that both candidates have identical levels of support, each with 44.0% of the vote.
The poll was conducted from July 18 to July 20 with 500 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.4 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. In general, you should not put too much trust in the results of an individual poll. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, you can 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 in the two-party vote share.
Comparison to other polls
In comparison to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 1.7 percentage points worse in the poll. This deviation is outside the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 52.0% and Trump 48.0% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Clinton has 2 percentage points less when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast for Ohio. The PollyVote forecast is thus outside the poll's sampling error.
