Nevada: Dead heat between Trump and Clinton in latest KTNV/Rasmussen poll
KTNV/Rasmussen published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from Nevada were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
In Nevada, the election outcome is usually decided by a narrow margin. This is why the state is commonly referred to as a battleground state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
KTNV/Rasmussen poll results
Of those who answered the question, 39.0% said that they are going to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% revealed that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from September 16 to September 18, among a random sample of 800 likely voters. If one takes into account the poll's error margin of +/-4.0 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be interpreted with caution, since they may incorporate substantial errors. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, the best practice is to rely on combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that draws upon forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
For the following analysis, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields values of 48.2% for Clinton and 51.9% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Nevada polls, Trump's two-party vote share is currently at 50.3%. Relative to her numbers in the KTNV/Rasmussen poll Trump's poll average is 1.6 percentage points worse. This margin is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Trump to gain 49.4% of the two-party vote in Nevada. That is, Polly's prediction is 2.5 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's error margin.