RABA Research poll: Trump trails by a solid margin
Results of a new national poll carried out by RABA Research on behalf of RABA Research were distributed on August 1. The poll asked respondents for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
RABA Research poll results
Of those who responded, 46.0% said that they would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 31.0% declared that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The Internet poll was carried out between July 29 and July 29. The sample size was 956 likely voters. The error margin is +/-3.2 percentage points. This means that the poll results for the candidates of both parties differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, one should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they sometimes incorporate large errors. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, we recommend to use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that draws upon forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 59.7% for Clinton and 40.3% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls has Clinton at 51.5% of the two-party vote. In comparison to her numbers in the RABA Research poll Clinton's poll average is 8.2 percentage points worse. This difference is outside the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 52.0% of the two-party vote. That is, Polly's combined forecast is 7.7 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's error margin.