New NBC News poll shows Clinton with 8 points lead
By NBC News released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
NBC News poll results
The poll was conducted between August 15 and August 21. The sample size was 1745 participants. Given the poll's sampling error of +/-1.1 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they often contain large errors. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 54.4% for Clinton and 45.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 53.1%. This value is 1.4 percentage points lower than corresponding numbers in the NBC News poll. This difference is outside the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 53.5% of the two-party vote. That is, the combined PollyVote is 0.9 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's margin of error.
