Clinton and Trump virtually tied in latest UPI/CVOTER poll
By UPI/CVOTER published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
UPI/CVOTER poll results
The results show that 48.0% of respondents would give their vote to former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 46.0% intend to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out via Internet from August 30 to September 5 among 1220 likely voters. The margin of error is +/-2.9 points. This means that the levels of voter support for the Democratic and the Republican candidate do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Hence, a good strategy is to not be too confident the results of an individual poll. Rather than relying on results from single polls, you should use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that draws upon different methods and data.
For the following analysis, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This procedure results in figures of 51.1% for Clinton and 48.9% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
Clinton is currently at 52.1% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls. Relative to numbers in the UPI/CVOTER 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.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 52.5% of the two-party vote. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 1.4 points above polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's error margin.
