Pennsylvania: 9 points lead for Clinton in latest Suffolk University poll
By Suffolk University released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Suffolk University poll results
Of those who responded, 50.0% said that they intend to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 41.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from July 25 to July 27 among 500 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.4 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be interpreted with caution, because they often include substantial biases. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, one should consult combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that draws upon different methods and data.
For the following analysis, we convert the candidates' raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 55.0% for Clinton and 45.1% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
If we look at an average of Pennsylvania polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 55.2%. This value is 0.2 percentage points higher than her corresponding numbers in the Suffolk University poll. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The latest PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 53.4% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. Hence, Polly's forecast is 1.6 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin indicates that this deviation is insignificant.
