Clinton leads in Pennsylvania by 10 points in new QuinnipiacQuinnipiac poll
By QuinnipiacQuinnipiac published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
QuinnipiacQuinnipiac poll results
The results show that 52.0% of respondents indicated that they would cast a ballot for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 42.0% would vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 30 to August 7 with 815 likely voters. Given the poll's margin of error of +/-3.4 percentage points, the spread in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they can incorporate large errors. At least, 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 55.3% for Clinton and 44.7% for Trump. On March 23 Clinton obtained only 51.2% in the QuinnipiacQuinnipiac poll and Trump obtained 48.8%.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Pennsylvania sees Clinton at 55.1% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.2 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the QuinnipiacQuinnipiac poll. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 53.3% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 2.0 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin suggests that this deviation is negligible.
