Colorado: Dead heat between Clinton and Trump in latest Remington Research (R) poll
Results of a new poll administered by Remington Research (R) were spread. The poll asked interviewees from Colorado for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
In Colorado, the election outcome is often decided by a narrow margin. This is why the state is commonly viewed as a swing state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
Remington Research (R) poll results
Of those who answered the question, 45.0% said that they intend to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from October 30 to October 30, among a random sample of 1176 likely voters. If one accounts for the poll's error margin of +/-2.9 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they often incorporate large errors. Rather than relying on results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that includes forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
For the following analysis, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 50.6% for Clinton and 49.4% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
An average of recent polls in Colorado sees Clinton at 52.9% of the two-party vote. In comparison to her numbers in the Remington Research (R) poll Clinton's poll average is 2.3 percentage points better. This deviation is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 54.6% of the two-party vote in Colorado. This means that Polly's combined forecast is 4.0 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error indicates that this deviation is significant.