Ohio: Clinton tied with Trump in latest Emerson*Emerson* poll
By EmersonEmerson released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
In Ohio, the popular vote is usually decided by a narrow margin. This is the reason why the state is commonly viewed as a swing state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
EmersonEmerson poll results
The results show that the two candidates can draw on equal levels of support, each with 43.0% of the vote.
This poll was conducted from August 25 to August 27, among a random sample of 800 likely voters. If one accounts for the poll's margin of error of +/-3.4 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, you should not focus too much on the results of an individual poll. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, 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 for the two-party vote share.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Ohio sees Clinton at 52.2% of the two-party vote. In comparison to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 2.2 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 52.0% and Trump 48.0% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Clinton has 2 percentage points less when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast for Ohio. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's sampling error.
