New NBC-WSJ-Marist poll in Nevada: Trump and Clinton in a dead heat
By Results of a new poll conducted by NBC-WSJ-Marist were published. The poll asked respondents from Nevada for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Historically, Nevada has been a swing state, in which neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have had overwhelming support to secure its electoral college votes. This is why predictions in this state are of particular value.
NBC-WSJ-Marist poll results
According to the results, 45.0% of respondents are going to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% are going to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out between September 6 and September 8. The sample size was 627 likely voters. If one accounts for the poll's sampling error of +/-3.9 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Thus, as a general rule, don't put too much trust in the results of an individual poll. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in figures of 50.6% for Clinton and 49.4% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
Clinton can currently count on 48.9% of the major two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Nevada. Relative to his numbers in the NBC-WSJ-Marist poll Clinton's poll average is 1.7 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 50.3% of the two-party vote in Nevada. This means that Polly's combined forecast is 0.3 points below his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's sampling error.
