Pennsylvania: Clinton with clear advantage in latest Susquehanna poll
By Results of a new poll conducted by Susquehanna were announced. The poll asked respondents from Pennsylvania for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Susquehanna poll results
The results show that 47.0% of interviewees plan to cast a ballot for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 37.0% are going to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between July 31 and August 4. The sample size was 772 likely voters. If one takes into account the poll's error margin of +/-3.5 percentage points, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Single polls often incorporate large biases, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, forecasting research recommends to use combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that relies on forecasts from different methods, each of which relies on different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The corresponding figures are 56.0% for Clinton and 44.1% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Pennsylvania polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 55.2%. This value is 0.8 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the Susquehanna poll. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 53.4% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 2.6 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's margin of error.
