Clinton leads in Pennsylvania by 11 points in latest NBC/WSJ/MaristNBC/WSJ poll
By NBC/WSJ/MaristNBC/WSJ released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
NBC/WSJ/MaristNBC/WSJ poll results
Of those who responded, 48.0% said that they intend to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 37.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from August 3 to August 7 among 834 registered voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.4 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
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, as they often incorporate large errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 56.5% for Clinton and 43.5% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
An average of recent polls in Pennsylvania sees Clinton at 55.2% of the two-party vote. Compared to her numbers in the NBC/WSJ/MaristNBC/WSJ poll Clinton's poll average is 1.3 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The latest PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 53.3% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. Hence, Polly's forecast is 3.2 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's error margin.
