PPP (D) poll in Pennsylvania: Trump trails by 4 points
By PPP (D) published the results of a new poll. In this poll, participants from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
PPP (D) poll results
According to the results, 49.0% of participants will cast a ballot for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 45.0% are going to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 29 to July 31 among 1505 likely voters. Taking into account the poll's margin of error of +/-2.5 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they often contain large errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can convert them into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields figures of 52.1% for Clinton and 47.9% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
Clinton can currently count on 55.1% of the major two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Pennsylvania. This value is 3 percentage points higher than her corresponding numbers in the PPP (D) poll. This difference is outside the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 54.6% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 2.5 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin indicates that this difference is negligible.
