Latest Economist poll: Trump and Clinton in a dead heat
By Economist released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Economist poll results
The results show that 49.0% of participants will cast a ballot for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 46.0% plan to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from October 22 to October 26 among 1209 participants. The sampling error is +/-3.3 points. This means that the levels of voter support for the two candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls may include substantial biases, which is why they should be treated with caution. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to rely on combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that includes different methods and data.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 51.6% for Clinton and 48.4% for Trump. In the most recent Economist poll on October 18 Clinton received 52.2%, while Trump received only 47.8%.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls has Clinton at 53.3% of the two-party vote. Relative to numbers in the Economist poll Clinton's poll average is 1.7 percentage points better. This deviation is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The latest PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 53.9% of the two-party vote. That is, Polly's combined forecast is 2.3 points above polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's error margin.
