DeSart & Holbrook model: Clinton tied with Trump in Iowa
The DeSart & Holbrook model released an updated forecast of the election result. The model currently predicts a tie, with both Clinton and Trump obtaining 50% of the two-party vote. In comparison, on October 19, Clinton was predicted to achieve 50.5% of the vote.
Historically, Iowa has been a swing state, in which no single party has had overwhelming support to clinch its electoral college votes. This is the reason why predictions here are of particular importance.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single models, because they can incorporate large errors. Instead of trusting the results from single models, the best practice is to use combined models or, even better, a combined forecast that uses forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
The DeSart & Holbrook model compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 50.3% and Trump 49.7% of the two-party vote in Iowa. Clinton has 0.4 percentage points less when the results of the econometric model are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast for Iowa.