Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania: Clinton with steady advantage
By Quinnipiac published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Quinnipiac poll results
Of those who answered the question, 52.0% said that they intend to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% revealed that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from July 30 to August 7, among a random sample of 815 likely 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
Single polls should be regarded with caution, as they may include large errors. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to rely on combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that relies on forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The respective figures are 55.3% for Clinton and 44.7% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Pennsylvania polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 55.1%. In comparison to her numbers in the Quinnipiac poll Clinton's poll average is 0.2 percentage points worse. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 54.6% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. That is, the combined PollyVote is 0.7 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error suggests that this deviation is insignificant.
