6 points lead for Clinton in new Bloomberg poll
By Bloomberg published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, interviewees were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Bloomberg poll results
The poll was conducted between August 5 and August 8. The sample size was 749 participants. The error margin is +/-3.6 points, which means that the levels of voter support for both parties' candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls often include large biases, and should be interpreted with caution. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, the evidence-based approach is 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 Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 53.2% for Clinton and 46.8% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 53.0%. Relative to numbers in the Bloomberg poll Clinton's poll average is 0.2 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 53.5% of the two-party vote. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 0.3 points above polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's error margin.
