7 points lead for Clinton in new IBD poll
IBD released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
IBD poll results
The poll was conducted from July 29 to August 4. A total of 851 respondents responded. If one accounts for the poll's margin of error of +/-3.4 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they sometimes incorporate large errors. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 54.1% for Clinton and 45.9% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
In comparison to the average results of other polls Clinton performed better with 44.4 percentage points, while Trump did worse with 44.4 percentage points.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 52.5% and Trump 47.5% of the two-party vote. Clinton has 1.6 percentage points more and Trump has 1.6 percentage points less when the results of the poll are compared to the combined PollyVote forecast. The PollyVote forecast is thus outside the poll's margin of error.