Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania: Trump trails by a sustained margin
Quinnipiac released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Quinnipiac poll results
Of those who answered the question, 52.0% said that they would vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% said that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 30 to August 7. A total of 815 likely voters responded. Given the poll's margin of error of +/-3.4 percentage points, the difference in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be treated with caution, since they can contain large errors. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 55.3% for Clinton and 44.7% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Pennsylvania sees Clinton at 55.1% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.2 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the Quinnipiac poll. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The latest PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 54.6% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. This means that Polly's prediction is 0.7 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's error margin.