Nevada: Dead heat between Clinton and Trump in latest UNLV/Hart Research (D)UNLV/Hart Research (D) poll
UNLV/Hart Research (D)UNLV/Hart Research (D) released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Nevada were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
In Nevada, the election outcome is often close. Therefore, the state is commonly regarded as a swing state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
UNLV/Hart Research (D)UNLV/Hart Research (D) poll results
Of those who responded, 47.0% said that they are going to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 27 to October 2. A total of 700 registered voters responded. The sampling error is +/-3.8 points, which means that the levels of voter support for the Republican and the Democratic candidate do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they may incorporate large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, we recommend to rely on combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that incorporates forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
To make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 51.7% for Clinton and 48.4% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Nevada polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 50.7%. Compared to her numbers in the UNLV/Hart Research (D)UNLV/Hart Research (D) poll Clinton's poll average is 1 percentage point lower. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The latest PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 51.0% of the two-party vote in Nevada. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 0.7 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's margin of error.