New ABC News poll: Trump trails by a sustained margin
By ABC News released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
ABC News poll results
This poll was conducted from August 1 to August 4, among a random sample of 815 participants. There is a sampling error of +/-4.0 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they may incorporate large errors. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we convert them into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 54.4% for Clinton and 45.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 53.1% of the major two-party vote in an average of recent polls. This value is 1.3 percentage points lower than respective numbers in the ABC News poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The current PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 53.5% of the two-party vote. That is, the combined PollyVote is 0.9 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin indicates that this deviation is insignificant.
