Latest Poll Shows Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Tied in Ohio

A new poll from Suffolk University has Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump now tied at 45 percent in Ohio. The poll of 500 likely Ohio voters was conducted just prior to the third presidential debate. Trump led by 3 points in Ohio a month ago, holding a 42-to-39 percent advantage over Clinton.

“The race couldn’t get any closer in the Buckeye State,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Research Center in Boston, said in a statement. “Hillary Clinton has closed the narrow gap with Donald Trump since September, and the final outcome in Ohio could come down to the energy of each candidate’s base and the respective campaigns’ get-out-the-vote operations.”

The poll also showed Libertarian Gary Johnson at 2 percent, down from 4 percent in September, Green Party nominee Jill Stein remaining at 1 percent and Richard Duncan, a non-party candidate, at 1 percent, with 5 percent undecided.

“The events over the past month have resulted in a dramatic shift among those Ohioans who self-identified as independents,” said Paleologos. “In September, Trump led among this group by twenty-seven points. Today, he only leads by six points, and ten percent of independents still have not decided. If Clinton takes the lead among independents, she wins Ohio. If those remaining undecided independents tip back to Trump, he will prevail.”

Suffolk University used live telephone interviews of households where residents indicated they were very or somewhat likely to vote in the 2016 general election. The margin of error is +/-4.4 percentage points at a 95 percent level of confidence.

The gender gap has widened a bit since September on both sides, with women supporting Clinton 51 percent to 39 percent. Men preferred Trump by nearly the same margin, 51 percent to 38 percent. However, Clinton has gained 6 points among men since the September poll.

Baldwin Wallace University and Community Research Institute released a poll Oct. 12 that found Clinton leading Trump by 9 percentage points, but RealClearPolitics' aggregate of several polls shows Trump leading the Democrat by 0.4 percentage points.

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