Clinton tied with Trump in latest IBD poll
Results of a new national poll conducted by IBD were announced. The poll asked respondents for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
IBD poll results
The results show that both candidates have the same level of support, each with 42.0% of the vote.
The poll was conducted from October 16 to October 21. A total of 791 participants responded. Given the poll's sampling error of +/-3.6 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls may incorporate large biases, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The results of the actual poll mean 50.0 % for Clinton and 50.0 % for Trump for the two-party vote share. To compare: 51.2% was obtained by Clinton in the IBD poll on October 19, for Trump this result was only 48.8%.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 53.3%. When compared to the average forecast of other polls Clinton performed 3.3 percentage points worse in the poll. This margin is outside the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 53.9% and Trump 46.1% of the two-party vote. Clinton has 3.9 percentage points less when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error shows that this difference is significant.