New Monmouth poll in Ohio: Trump trails by a narrow margin
By Monmouth published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Historically, Ohio has been a purple state, in which neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have had overwhelming support to clinch its electoral college votes. This is the reason why forecasts in this state are of particular value.
Monmouth poll results
According to the results, 43.0% of participants plan to give their vote to former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 39.0% would vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from August 18 to August 21, among a random sample of 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
Individual polls should be interpreted with caution, since they can include substantial errors. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, one can convert them into two-party vote shares. This procedure results in figures of 52.4% for Clinton and 47.6% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Ohio sees Clinton at 52.8% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.4 percentage points higher than her corresponding numbers in the Monmouth poll. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 52.1% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Hence, the combined PollyVote is 0.3 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's sampling error.
