Tossup between Clinton and Trump in new Economist poll
By Economist released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Economist poll results
According to the results, 44.0% of participants indicated that they would give their vote to former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% are going to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from September 4 to September 6 with 955 participants. If one takes into account the poll's sampling error of +/-4.7 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls may 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.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we convert them into shares of the two-party vote. The corresponding figures are 51.2% for Clinton and 48.8% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 52.1% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls. This value is 0.9 percentage points higher than corresponding numbers in the Economist poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 52.5% of the two-party vote. Hence, the PollyVote is 1.3 points above polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error suggests that this difference is insignificant.
