New Gravis poll in North Carolina: Clinton and Trump virtually tied
By Gravis published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from North Carolina were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Gravis poll results
Of those who responded, 44.0% said that they are going to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 43.0% declared that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from August 15 to August 17, among a random sample of 723 registered voters. The sampling error is +/-3.6 points, which means that the levels of voter support for the candidates of both parties do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls often contain large biases, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 50.6% for Clinton and 49.4% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in North Carolina sees Clinton at 50.7% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.1 percentage points higher than her corresponding numbers in the Gravis poll. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 50.2% of the two-party vote in North Carolina. This means that Polly's prediction is 0.4 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin suggests that this deviation is negligible.
