Bloomberg poll in Ohio: Clinton trails by 5 points
By Results of a new poll administered by Bloomberg were circulated. The poll asked participants from Ohio for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
In Ohio, the election outcome is usually decided by a narrow margin. This is why the state is commonly regarded as a purple state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
Bloomberg poll results
Of those who responded, 43.0% said that they would vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 48.0% revealed that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from September 9 to September 12 among 802 likely voters. Considering the poll's margin of error of +/-3.5 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be interpreted with caution, because they may incorporate large biases. Rather than relying on results from single polls, the best practice scientific advice is to consult combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that draws upon different methods and data.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 47.3% for Clinton and 52.8% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Trump can currently count on 49.9% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Ohio. In comparison to her numbers in the Bloomberg poll Trump's poll average is 2.9 percentage points worse. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Trump to gain 48.5% of the two-party vote in Ohio. This means that Polly's combined forecast is 4.3 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's margin of error.
