Nevada: Virtual tie between Trump and Clinton in new Monmouth poll
By Results of a new poll administered by Monmouth were distributed. The poll asked participants from Nevada for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Nevada is traditionally a purple state, where Republicans and Democrats have often gained similar voter support. Hence, the election outcome in that state is viewed as critical in determining which party will win the majority of electoral votes.
Monmouth poll results
According to the results, 42.0% of participants will cast a ballot for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% will cast a ballot for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 11 to September 13 with 406 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
Single polls often contain large biases, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, forecasting research recommends to use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that incorporates forecasts from different methods, each of which incorporates different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 48.8% for Clinton and 51.2% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
If we look at an average of Nevada polls, Trump's current two-party vote share is at 49.6%. This value is 1.6 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the Monmouth poll. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote expects Trump to gain 49.0% of the two-party vote in Nevada. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 2.2 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's sampling error.
