Tossup between Clinton and Trump in new UPI/CVOTER poll
By UPI/CVOTER published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, interviewees were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
UPI/CVOTER poll results
Of those who replied, 47.0% said that they intend to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 48.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out via Internet from September 7 to September 13 among 1245 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-2.8 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, because they often incorporate substantial errors. Rather, 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 translate them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in values of 49.5% for Clinton and 50.5% for Trump. In the latest UPI/CVOTER poll on August 30 Clinton received 51.6%, while Trump received only 0.0%.
Results vs. other polls
An average of recent polls has Trump at 48.8% of the two-party vote. In comparison to numbers in the UPI/CVOTER poll Trump's poll average is 1.7 percentage points worse. This margin is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The most recent PollyVote predicts Trump to gain 47.1% of the two-party vote. That is, Polly's forecast is 3.4 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error reveals that this deviation is significant.
