Clinton tied with Trump in new UPI/CVOTER poll
By UPI/CVOTER published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, interviewees were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
UPI/CVOTER poll results
The results show that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire Donald Trump have the exact same level of support, each with 48.0% of the vote.
The Internet poll was in the field between August 17 and August 23. The sample size was 1196 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
As a general rule, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they often incorporate large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, forecasting research recommends to use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that incorporates different methods and data.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, you can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump for the two-party vote share.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 53.2%. When compared to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 3.2 percentage points worse in the poll. This margin is outside the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 53.4% and Trump 46.6% of the two-party vote. Clinton has 3.4 percentage points less when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast. The PollyVote forecast is thus outside the poll's sampling error.
