Pennsylvania: New Suffolk University poll shows Clinton with 9 points lead
By Suffolk University released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Suffolk University poll results
According to the results, 50.0% of participants would give their vote to former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 41.0% intend to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 25 to July 27. A total of 500 likely voters responded. The sampling error is +/-4.4 points. This means that the poll results for Trump and Clinton differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be regarded with caution, since they may incorporate substantial errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 55.0% for Clinton and 45.1% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of Pennsylvania polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 55.2%. Compared to her numbers in the Suffolk University poll Clinton's poll average is 0.2 percentage points better. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 54.6% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. This means that Polly's combined forecast is 0.4 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin indicates that this deviation is insignificant.
