Clinton tied with Trump in latest LA Times poll
By Results of a new national poll administered by LA Times were announced. The poll asked respondents for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
LA Times poll results
The results show that real estate developer Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can draw on the exact same level of support, each with 44.0% of the vote.
The poll was conducted between August 21 and August 27. The sample size was 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, as they may contain substantial errors. Rather than relying on results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to consult combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that relies on forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can convert them into two-party vote shares. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump concerning the two-party vote share. In the most recent LA Times poll on August 27 Clinton received 51.1%, while Trump received only 48.9%.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls has Clinton at 53.0% of the two-party vote. When compared to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 3 percentage points worse in the poll. This margin is outside the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 53.7% and Trump 46.3% of the two-party vote. Clinton has 3.7 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 margin of error.
