5 points lead for Clinton in new PPP poll
By On August 1, PPP 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.
PPP poll results
Of those who answered the question, 50.0% said that they are going to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 45.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 29 to July 30. A total of 1276 respondents responded. If one accounts for the poll's margin of error of +/-2.7 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. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in values of 52.6% for Clinton and 47.4% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 51.5% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls. This value is 1.1 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the PPP poll. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The latest PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 52.0% of the two-party vote. This means that the PollyVote is 0.6 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's margin of error.
