Quinnipiac poll in Ohio: Clinton with 4 points lead
By Quinnipiac published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Historically, Ohio has been a purple state, in which no single party has had overwhelming support to clinch that state's electoral college votes. This is why forecasts here are of particular interest.
Quinnipiac poll results
Of those who answered the question, 49.0% said that they plan to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 45.0% declared that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 30 to August 7 with 812 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.4 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be treated with caution, as they may contain substantial errors. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, the best practice scientific advice is to look at combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote 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 translate 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 currently runs at 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 difference is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 51.9% of the two-party vote in Ohio. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 0.2 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's margin of error.
