New Quinnipiac poll in Ohio: Clinton and Trump neck-and-neck
By Quinnipiac released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Historically, Ohio has been a battleground state, in which neither of the two major parties has had overwhelming support to clinch that state's electoral college votes. Hence, predictions in this state are of particular importance.
Quinnipiac poll results
According to the results, 45.0% of interviewees are going to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 46.0% are going to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 29 to September 7. A total of 775 likely voters responded. Considering the poll's sampling error of +/-3.5 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be treated with caution, since they often contain large biases. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we convert the candidates' raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 49.5% for Clinton and 50.6% for Trump. In the most recent Quinnipiac poll on August 7 Clinton received only 47.9%, while Trump received only 0.0%.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of Ohio polls, Trump's current two-party vote share is at 50.6%. Relative to his numbers in the Quinnipiac poll Trump's poll average is 0 percentage points higher. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The current PollyVote expects Trump to gain 48.7% of the two-party vote in Ohio. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 1.9 points below his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's error margin.
