Ohio: Clinton tied with Trump in new Emerson*Emerson* poll
By EmersonEmerson published the results of a new poll. In this poll, participants from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Ohio is traditionally a battleground state, where the two major political parties have historically won similar voter support. Therefore, the election outcome here is regarded crucial in determining who will win the majority of electoral votes.
EmersonEmerson poll results
The results show that the two candidates are on equal standing, each with 43.0% of the vote.
The poll was conducted from August 25 to August 27 with 800 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
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. In general, don't have too much confidence in the results of a single poll. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump concerning the two-party vote share.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton is currently at 52.2% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Ohio. When compared 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 suggests that the poll is an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 51.9% and Trump 48.1% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Clinton has 1.9 percentage points less when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast for Ohio. The PollyVote forecast is thus outside the poll's margin of error.
