Clinton and Trump neck-and-neck in new UPI/CVOTER poll
By Results of a new national poll carried out by UPI/CVOTER were spread. The poll asked participants for whom they will vote: Donald·Trump or Hillary·Clinton.
UPI/CVOTER poll results
This poll was conducted via Internet from August 14 to August 20, among a random sample of 1191 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-2.9 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be interpreted with caution, because they may include large errors. Rather than relying on results from single polls, the evidence-based approach is to rely on combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that draws upon forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 49.5% for Clinton and 50.5% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Trump can currently count on 46.9% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls. Compared to numbers in the UPI/CVOTER poll Trump's poll average is 3.6 percentage points worse. This difference is outside the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote expects Trump to gain 46.5% of the two-party vote. Hence, the PollyVote forecast is 4.0 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error suggests that this deviation is significant.
