Pennsylvania: Trump and Clinton virtually tied in new CNN-ORC poll
By CNN-ORC published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
CNN-ORC poll results
Of those who answered the question, 50.0% said that they plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 47.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from September 20 to September 25, among a random sample of 771 likely voters. Taking into account the poll's error margin of +/-3.5 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls can incorporate substantial biases, and should be interpreted with caution. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, you should rely on combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that relies on different methods and data.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 51.6% for Clinton and 48.5% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton can currently count on 51.4% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Pennsylvania. This value is 0.2 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the CNN-ORC poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 52.5% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. This means that Polly's prediction is 0.9 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error indicates that this deviation is negligible.
