New ARG poll shows Trump with 5 points lead
By Results of a new national poll carried out by ARG were published. The poll asked respondents for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
ARG poll results
The poll was conducted from August 17 to August 20 via phone. A total of 994 respondents responded. There is a sampling error of +/-3.2 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, one should not be too confident the results of a single poll. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, one can translate them into two-party vote shares. The respective figures are 47.2% for Clinton and 52.8% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of polls, Trump's current two-party vote share is at 46.9%. This value is 5.9 percentage points lower than corresponding numbers in the ARG poll. This difference is outside the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Trump to gain 46.5% of the two-party vote. This means that the combined PollyVote is 6.3 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's margin of error.
