Clinton and Trump virtually tied in new IBD poll
By IBD published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, participants were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
IBD poll results
Of those who answered the question, 44.0% said that they will vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 43.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out between August 26 and September 1. The sample size was 861 participants. 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
As a general rule, however, one should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they often incorporate large errors. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, we convert them into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields values of 50.6% for Clinton and 49.4% for Trump. On August 9 Clinton received 54.1% in the IBD poll and Trump received only 45.9%.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls has Clinton at 52.5% of the two-party vote. Relative to numbers in the IBD poll Clinton's poll average is 1.9 percentage points better. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 53.4% of the two-party vote. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 2.8 points above polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's sampling error.
