New Monmouth poll in North Carolina: Clinton and Trump neck-and-neck
By Monmouth published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from North Carolina were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Monmouth poll results
Of those who replied, 44.0% said that they would vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% said that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from August 20 to August 23 with 401 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.9 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they often incorporate large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, we recommend to consult combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that draws upon forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in values of 51.2% for Clinton and 48.8% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in North Carolina has Clinton at 50.7% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.5 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the Monmouth poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 50.2% of the two-party vote in North Carolina. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 1.0 point below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin indicates that this deviation is insignificant.
