Ohio: Clinton tied with Trump in new Emerson poll
By Emerson published the results of a new poll. In this poll, participants from Ohio were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Historically, Ohio has been a purple state, in which no single party has had overwhelming support to clinch that state's electoral college votes. This is the reason why forecasts here are of particular interest.
Emerson poll results
The results show that the two candidates have the exact same level of support, each with 43.0% of the vote.
This poll was conducted from August 25 to August 27, among a random sample of 800 likely voters. If one takes into account the poll's error margin of +/-3.4 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be treated with caution, as they often include large errors. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, the recommended strategy consult combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that uses forecasts from different methods, each of which uses different data.
For the following comparison, we convert the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump in the two-party vote share.
Results in comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Ohio polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 49.4%. In comparison to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 0.6 percentage points better in the poll. This margin is outside the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 51.3% and Trump 48.7% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Clinton has 1.3 percentage points less when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast for Ohio. The PollyVote forecast is thus outside the poll's sampling error.
