FOX NewsFOX News poll in Colorado: Trump trails by 10 points
FOX NewsFOX News released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Colorado were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
In Colorado, the popular vote is often decided by a narrow margin. Therefore, the state is commonly regarded as a purple state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
FOX NewsFOX News poll results
According to the results, 44.0% of participants said that they would give their vote to former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 34.0% said that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 9 to July 12. A total of 600 registered voters responded. The margin of error is +/-4.0 points, which means that the poll results for both candidates differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be regarded with caution, as they may include large biases. Rather than relying on results from single polls, the recommended strategy look at combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that includes forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
For the following comparison, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 56.4% for Clinton and 43.6% for Trump. On August 7 Clinton obtained only 43.6% in the FOX NewsFOX News poll and Trump obtained only 0.0%.
Results in comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of Colorado polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 55.9%. Compared to her numbers in the FOX NewsFOX News poll Clinton's poll average is 0.5 percentage points worse. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 53.4% of the two-party vote in Colorado. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 3.0 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error suggests that this difference is negligible.