Virtual tie between Trump and Clinton in new LA Times poll
By Results of a new national poll carried out by LA Times were released. The poll asked interviewees for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
LA Times poll results
Of those who responded, 45.0% said that they will vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 43.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from August 20 to August 26, among a random sample of 2460 participants. There is a sampling error of +/-4.5 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, since they can contain large biases. Rather, one should examine 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 51.1% for Clinton and 48.9% for Trump. On August 26 Clinton obtained only 50.0% in the LA Times poll and Trump obtained only 0.0%.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 53.1%. This value is 2 percentage points higher than corresponding numbers in the LA Times poll. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The most recent PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 53.7% of the two-party vote. Hence, Polly's prediction is 2.6 points above polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin shows that this deviation is negligible.
