Colorado: Substantial advantage for Clinton in Monmouth poll
By On August 1, Monmouth released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Colorado were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Historically, Colorado has been a swing state, in which neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have had overwhelming support to clinch that state's electoral college votes. Hence, predictions here are of particular importance.
Monmouth poll results
Of those who replied, 48.0% said that they plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 35.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from July 9 to July 12, among a random sample of 404 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.9 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, don't be too confident the results of an individual poll. 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, we translate them into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 57.8% for Clinton and 42.2% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton is currently at 54.9% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Colorado. This value is 2.9 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the Monmouth poll. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 53.1% of the two-party vote in Colorado. Hence, the combined PollyVote is 4.7 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error reveals that this difference is negligible.
