Ohio: Slim lead for Clinton in Quinnipiac poll
By Quinnipiac published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
In Ohio, the election outcome is often decided by a narrow margin. This is the reason why the state is commonly viewed as a purple state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
Quinnipiac poll results
Of those who answered the question, 49.0% said that they plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 45.0% declared that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted between July 30 and August 7. The sample size was 812 likely voters. Considering the poll's error margin of +/-3.4 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they often incorporate large errors. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, you can translate them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 52.1% for Clinton and 47.9% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Ohio has Clinton at 52.8% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.7 percentage points higher than her corresponding numbers in the Quinnipiac poll. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier. The most recent PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 52.1% of the two-party vote in Ohio.
