New LA Times poll: Clinton and Trump in a tossup
By LA Times published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, participants were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
LA Times poll results
The results show that 43.0% of participants plan to give their vote to former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 45.0% plan to give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 29 to September 4 among 2576 participants. Given the poll's error margin of +/-4.5 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be treated with caution, since they often include substantial errors. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 48.9% for Clinton and 51.1% for Trump. On September 4 Clinton obtained only 48.3% in the LA Times poll and Trump obtained 51.7%.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls has Trump at 47.7% of the two-party vote. This value is 3.4 percentage points lower than respective numbers in the LA Times poll. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Trump to gain 47.1% of the two-party vote. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 4.0 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's margin of error.
