New KSTP/SurveyUSA poll in Minnesota: Clinton and Trump in a dead heat

Results of a new poll administered by KSTP/SurveyUSA were circulated. The poll asked respondents from Minnesota for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.

According to the results, 42.0% of interviewees plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 45.0% would vote for billionaire Donald Trump.

This poll was conducted from October 29 to November 2, among a random sample of 516 registered voters. If one takes into account the poll's sampling error of +/-4.4 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.

Putting the results in context

Individual polls can contain large biases, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that incorporates forecasts from different methods, each of which incorporates different data.

For the following comparison, we convert the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 48.3% for Clinton and 51.7% for Trump.

Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast

The current PollyVote expects Trump to gain 44.1% of the two-party vote in Minnesota. That is, Polly's combined forecast is 7.6 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's sampling error.

This article was automatically generated by the PollyBot, which uses algorithms developed by AX Semantics to generate text from data stored in our API. The exact dataset underlying this particular article can be found here.

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