CBS News/YouGov poll in Ohio: Clinton with slight lead
By CBS News/YouGov released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
In Ohio, the popular vote is often decided by a narrow margin. This is why the state is commonly regarded as a purple state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
CBS News/YouGov poll results
According to the results, 46.0% of participants are going to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 40.0% plan to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from August 17 to August 19, among a random sample of 997 likely voters. The error margin is +/-3.9 points. This means that the levels of voter support for the Republican and the Democratic candidate do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they may incorporate large errors. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to rely on combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that incorporates different methods and data.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, you can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in figures of 53.5% for Clinton and 46.5% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Ohio sees Clinton at 52.0% of the two-party vote. Relative to her numbers in the CBS News/YouGov poll Clinton's poll average is 1.5 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 51.9% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Hence, Polly's forecast is 1.6 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's margin of error.
