Ohio: Clinton tied with Trump in latest Emerson*Emerson* poll
By Results of a new poll conducted by EmersonEmerson were circulated. The poll asked interviewees from Ohio for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Historically, Ohio has been a battleground state, in which neither of the two major parties has had overwhelming support to clinch its electoral college votes. Therefore, forecasts in this state are of particular interest.
EmersonEmerson poll results
The results show that both candidates can draw on equal levels of support, each with 43.0% of the vote.
The poll was conducted from August 25 to August 27. A total of 800 likely voters responded. 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. As a result, you should not rely too much on 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 benchmark methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump in the two-party vote share.
Results vs. other polls
An average of recent polls in Ohio has Clinton at 52.3% of the two-party vote. When compared to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 2.3 percentage points worse in the poll. This difference is outside the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's 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 error margin.
