Iowa: Clinton and Trump neck-and-neck in latest Quinnipiac poll
By Quinnipiac released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Iowa were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Iowa is traditionally a purple state, where the Republican and Democratic candidates have historically won similar levels of voter support. This is the reason why the election outcome in that state is considered critical in determining the overall result of the presidential election.
Quinnipiac poll results
Of those who answered the question, 47.0% said that they will vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% revealed that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from August 9 to August 16 among 846 likely voters. The margin of error is +/-3.4 points. This means that the levels of voter support for the two candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be treated with caution, because they often contain substantial biases. Instead of relying on results from single polls, forecasting research recommends to rely on combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that relies on different methods and data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 51.7% for Clinton and 48.4% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Iowa polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 49.6%. This value is 2.1 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the Quinnipiac poll. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 51.6% of the two-party vote in Iowa. That is, Polly's forecast is 0.1 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's sampling error.
