Florida: Virtual tie between Trump and Clinton in new NBC-WSJ-Marist poll
By NBC-WSJ-Marist released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Florida were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Historically, Florida has been a purple state, in which neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has had overwhelming support to secure that state's electoral college votes. Therefore, predictions here are of particular interest.
NBC-WSJ-Marist poll results
Of those who answered the question, 46.0% said that they intend to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% revealed that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between October 3 and October 5. The sample size was 700 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.7 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls often incorporate substantial biases, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we convert them into shares of the two-party vote. The corresponding figures are 51.1% for Clinton and 48.9% for Trump. In the latest NBC-WSJ-Marist poll on July 11 Clinton received 54.3%, while Trump received only 45.7%.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Florida sees Clinton at 51.6% of the two-party vote. In comparison to her numbers in the NBC-WSJ-Marist poll Clinton's poll average is 0.5 percentage points higher. This margin is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 50.4% of the two-party vote in Florida. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 0.7 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's margin of error.
