Clinton leads in Pennsylvania by 4 points in latest PPP (D) poll
By PPP (D) published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
PPP (D) poll results
Of those who answered the question, 49.0% said that they plan to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 45.0% revealed that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from July 29 to July 31 with 1505 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-2.5 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently 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, as they often incorporate large errors. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, you can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields values of 52.1% for Clinton and 47.9% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Pennsylvania polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 55.1%. This value is 3.0 percentage points higher than her respective numbers in the PPP (D) poll. This deviation is outside the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The latest PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 53.4% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 1.3 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's sampling error.
