Pennsylvania: 10 points lead for Clinton in new Susquehanna poll
By Results of a new poll carried out by Susquehanna were distributed. The poll asked respondents from Pennsylvania for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Susquehanna poll results
Of those who replied, 47.0% said that they plan to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 37.0% declared that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 31 to August 4. A total of 772 likely voters responded. Taking into account the poll's sampling error of +/-3.5 percentage points, the spread in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they can contain large errors. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, you can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 56.0% for Clinton and 44.1% for Trump. To compare: Only 44.1% was gained by Clinton in the Susquehanna poll on August 16, for Trump this number was only 0.0%.
Results in comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Pennsylvania polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 55.2%. Compared to her numbers in the Susquehanna poll Clinton's poll average is 0.8 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 53.4% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. This means that the PollyVote is 2.6 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's margin of error.
