Monmouth poll in Ohio: Clinton with 4 points lead
By Results of a new poll administered by Monmouth were released. The poll asked respondents from Ohio for whom they will vote: Donald·Trump or Hillary·Clinton.
Historically, Ohio has been a swing state, in which neither of the two major parties has had overwhelming support to secure its electoral college votes. This is why forecasts here are of particular interest.
Monmouth poll results
The results show that 43.0% of participants are going to give their vote to former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 39.0% are going to give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from August 18 to August 21, among a random sample of 402 likely voters. The error margin is +/-4.9 percentage points. This means that the poll results for Clinton and Trump do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls often contain substantial errors, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 52.4% for Clinton and 47.6% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Ohio sees Clinton at 52.8% of the two-party vote. In comparison to her numbers in the Monmouth poll Clinton's poll average is 0.4 percentage points better. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 52.1% of the two-party vote in Ohio. That is, the combined PollyVote is 0.3 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error suggests that this difference is negligible.
