Ohio: Clinton holds narrow lead in Quinnipiac poll
By Quinnipiac published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Historically, Ohio has been a purple state, in which neither of the two major parties has had overwhelming support to secure that state's electoral college votes. Hence, predictions in this state are of particular value.
Quinnipiac poll results
According to the results, 49.0% of interviewees are going to give their vote to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 45.0% would vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 30 to August 7 with 812 likely voters. Taking into account the poll's error margin of +/-3.4 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be interpreted with caution, as they often include substantial errors. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, the best practice scientific advice is to look at combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that draws upon forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can convert them into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields figures of 52.1% for Clinton and 47.9% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton can currently count on 52.2% of the major two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Ohio. This value is 0.1 percentage points higher than her corresponding numbers in the Quinnipiac poll. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 52.0% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 0.1 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's sampling error.
