Dead heat between Trump and Clinton in latest Economist poll
By Results of a new national poll conducted by Economist were circulated. The poll asked respondents for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Economist poll results
Of those who responded, 44.0% said that they intend to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 42.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 4 to September 6. A total of 955 participants responded. The error margin is +/-4.7 points, which means that the poll results for the candidates of both parties do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be treated with caution, since they may incorporate large biases. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. This procedure results in figures of 51.2% for Clinton and 48.8% for Trump. For comparison: 52.8% was gained by Clinton in the Economist poll on September 6, for Trump this result was only 47.2%.
Results in comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 52.2%. In comparison to numbers in the Economist poll Clinton's poll average is 1 percentage point better. This deviation is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 52.4% of the two-party vote. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 1.2 points above polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's error margin.
