North Carolina: Clinton tied with Trump in new PPP (D) poll
Results of a new poll administered by PPP (D) were announced. The poll asked participants from North Carolina for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
PPP (D) poll results
According to the results, billionaire Donald Trump and former First Lady Hillary Clinton have equal levels of support, each with 47.0% of the vote.
This poll was conducted from September 18 to September 20, among a random sample of 1024 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.1 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they often contain large errors. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump in the two-party vote share. For comparison: 51.2% was obtained by Clinton in the PPP (D) poll on March 20, for Trump this number was only 48.8%.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 50.0% and Trump 50.0% 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. The PollyVote forecast is thus outside the poll's margin of error.