Trump and Clinton neck-and-neck in new LA Times poll
By LA Times published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, participants were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
LA Times poll results
Of those who answered the question, 43.0% said that they would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 45.0% revealed that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between August 29 and September 4. The sample size was 2576 participants. There is a sampling error of +/-4.5 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls can contain large biases, and should be interpreted with caution. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 48.9% for Clinton and 51.1% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
An average of recent polls has Trump at 47.7% of the two-party vote. Compared to numbers in the LA Times poll Trump's poll average is 3.4 percentage points worse. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Trump to gain 47.1% of the two-party vote. Hence, the PollyVote forecast is 4.0 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error suggests that this difference is insignificant.
