Virginia: Clinton and Trump neck-and-neck in latest Hampton University poll
By Results of a new poll conducted by Hampton University were announced. The poll asked participants from Virginia for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Historically, Virginia has been a battleground state, in which neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has had overwhelming support to secure its electoral college votes. Therefore, forecasts here are of particular value.
Hampton University poll results
The results show that 43.0% of participants plan to cast a ballot for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 41.0% are going to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted between August 24 and August 28. The sample size was 801 registered voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.7 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be regarded with caution, since they may contain large biases. Instead of relying on results from single polls, the evidence-based approach is to use combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that incorporates different methods and data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 51.2% for Clinton and 48.8% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 52.9% of the major two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Virginia. This value is 1.7 percentage points higher than her respective numbers in the Hampton University poll. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The latest PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 52.4% of the two-party vote in Virginia. That is, the PollyVote is 1.2 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error reveals that this difference is insignificant.
