North Carolina: Trump and Clinton virtually tied in new Suffolk University poll
By Suffolk University released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from North Carolina were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Suffolk University poll results
According to the results, 41.0% of participants intend to give their vote to former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 44.0% intend to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from September 5 to September 7 with 500 likely voters. Taking into account the poll's error margin of +/-4.4 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be treated with caution, since they often include substantial biases. Rather than relying on results from single polls, the best practice scientific advice is to use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that includes different methods and data.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 48.2% for Clinton and 51.8% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in North Carolina sees Trump at 50.7% of the two-party vote. This value is 1.1 percentage points lower than his corresponding numbers in the Suffolk University poll. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The latest PollyVote expects Trump to gain 50.1% of the two-party vote in North Carolina. That is, the combined PollyVote is 1.7 points below his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's margin of error.
