Ohio: New CBS News/YouGov poll shows Trump behind by 4 points
Results of a new poll administered by CBS News/YouGov were released. The poll asked participants from Ohio for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Ohio is traditionally a swing state, where Republicans and Democrats have often achieved similar levels of voter support. Hence, the election outcome in that state is viewed as critical in determining who will win the majority of electoral votes.
CBS News/YouGov poll results
Of those who replied, 46.0% said that they will vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% declared that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from October 5 to October 7 among 997 likely voters. Taking into account the poll's error margin of +/-3.9 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be regarded with caution, since they often incorporate large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to look at combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that incorporates forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
For the following comparison, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in values of 52.3% for Clinton and 47.7% for Trump. On August 19 Clinton received only 46.5% in the CBS News/YouGov poll and Trump received only 0.0%.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The current PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 50.9% of the two-party vote in Ohio. Hence, Polly's forecast is 1.4 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error reveals that this difference is negligible.