Ohio: Virtual tie between Clinton and Trump in latest Quinnipiac poll
By Quinnipiac released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Ohio is traditionally a swing state, where the Democrats and the GOP have historically gained similar voter support. This is why the election outcome in that state is considered crucial in determining which party will win the majority of electoral votes.
Quinnipiac poll results
Of those who answered the question, 45.0% said that they would vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 46.0% said that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from August 29 to September 7 among 775 likely voters. If one takes into account the poll's sampling error of +/-3.5 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls can incorporate large biases, and should be treated with caution. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, the best practice scientific advice is to rely on combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that uses different methods and data.
To make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, you can translate them into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields figures of 49.5% for Clinton and 50.6% for Trump. For comparison: Only 47.9% was obtained by Clinton in the Quinnipiac poll on September 3, for Trump this result was only 0.0%.
Results vs. other polls
An average of recent polls in Ohio sees Trump at 48.1% of the two-party vote. This value is 2.5 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the Quinnipiac poll. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The current PollyVote predicts Trump to gain 48.4% of the two-party vote in Ohio. This means that Polly's prediction is 2.2 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin shows that this deviation is negligible.
