North Carolina: Clinton tied with Trump in new PPP (D) poll
By Results of a new poll carried out by PPP (D) were distributed. The poll asked respondents from North Carolina for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
PPP (D) poll results
The results show that the two candidates have the same level of support, each with 47.0% of the vote.
The poll was in the field between September 18 and September 20. The sample size was 1024 likely voters. If one accounts for the poll's error margin of +/-3.1 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they may contain large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, the best practice is to consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that relies on different methods and data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, one can translate them into two-party vote shares. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump for the two-party vote share. On March 20 Clinton received 51.2% in the PPP (D) poll and Trump received only 48.8%.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton currently runs at 49.4% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in North Carolina. When compared to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 0.6 percentage points better in the poll. This deviation is outside the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is an outlier. The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 50.0% and Trump 50.0% of the two-party vote in North Carolina.
