Monmouth*Monmouth* poll in Colorado: Clinton with 13 points lead
Results of a new poll conducted by MonmouthMonmouth were announced. The poll asked participants from Colorado for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Colorado is traditionally a swing state, where the Republican and Democratic candidates have often achieved similar levels of support among voters. Hence, the election outcome in that state is regarded crucial in determining the overall result of the presidential election.
MonmouthMonmouth poll results
Of those who replied, 48.0% said that they intend to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 35.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 9 to July 12 with 404 likely voters. The error margin is +/-4.9 percentage points, which means that the levels of voter support for the Republican and the Democratic candidate differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they may incorporate large errors. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 57.8% for Clinton and 42.2% for Trump. On August 7 Clinton obtained only 42.2% in the MonmouthMonmouth poll and Trump obtained only 0.0%.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of Colorado polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 55.9%. In comparison to her numbers in the MonmouthMonmouth poll Clinton's poll average is 1.9 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 53.4% of the two-party vote in Colorado. This means that the combined PollyVote is 4.4 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error indicates that this difference is negligible.