North Carolina: Clinton tied with Trump in latest Civitas (R) poll
By Civitas (R) released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from North Carolina were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Civitas (R) poll results
According to the results, real estate developer Donald Trump and former New York Senator Hillary Clinton have the same level of support, each with 42.0% of the vote.
The poll was conducted from September 11 to September 12 among 600 likely voters. The error margin is +/-4.0 points. This means that the poll results for the Democratic and the Republican candidate do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they often incorporate large errors. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we translate 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 for the two-party vote share.
Results compared to other polls
An average of recent polls in North Carolina sees Clinton at 49.3% of the two-party vote. When compared to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 0.7 percentage points better in the poll. This margin is outside the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 50.0% and Trump 50.1% of the two-party vote in North Carolina. Clinton has 0 percentage points more when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast for North Carolina. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error reveals that this deviation is significant.
