Clinton leads in Ohio by 4 points in latest Monmouth poll
By Monmouth released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
In Ohio, the popular vote is usually close. This is the reason why the state is commonly viewed as a battleground state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
Monmouth poll results
Of those who answered the question, 43.0% said that they would vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 39.0% revealed that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 18 to August 21 among 402 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.9 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be regarded with caution, since they can include substantial biases. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, you can convert them into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 52.4% for Clinton and 47.6% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
Clinton currently achieves 52.8% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Ohio. In comparison to her numbers in the Monmouth poll Clinton's poll average is 0.4 percentage points better. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 52.1% of the two-party vote in Ohio. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 0.3 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's error margin.
