New LA Times poll shows Trump with 4 points lead
By Results of a new national poll carried out by LA Times were circulated on July 31. The poll asked participants for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
LA Times poll results
Of those who replied, 42.0% said that they would vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 46.0% revealed that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 24 to July 30 among 2188 participants. The sampling error is +/-2.1 points, which means that the poll results for Trump and Clinton differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls often include substantial errors, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we translate Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in figures of 47.7% for Clinton and 52.3% for Trump. To compare: Only 47.2% was obtained by Clinton in the LA Times poll on July 30, for Trump this result was 52.8%.
Results compared to other polls
Looking at an average of polls, Trump's two-party vote share is currently at 48.5%. Relative to his numbers in the LA Times poll Trump's poll average is 3.8 percentage points worse. This deviation is outside the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The current PollyVote predicts Trump to gain 48.0% of the two-party vote. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 4.3 points below his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus outside the poll's error margin.
