North Carolina: Trump and Clinton virtually tied in latest CNN-ORC poll
By CNN-ORC released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from North Carolina were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
CNN-ORC poll results
According to the results, 50.0% of respondents said that they intend to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 48.0% intend to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from October 10 to October 15 with 788 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.5 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls may incorporate large errors, and should be treated with caution. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, one should consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that includes forecasts from different methods, each of which includes different data.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can convert them into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 51.0% for Clinton and 49.0% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in North Carolina sees Clinton at 51.8% of the two-party vote. Relative to her numbers in the CNN-ORC poll Clinton's poll average is 0.8 percentage points higher. This margin is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The latest PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 50.2% of the two-party vote in North Carolina. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 0.8 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's error margin.
