Clinton leads by 8 points in latest NBC News poll
Results of a new national poll carried out by NBC News were released. The poll asked respondents for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
NBC News poll results
This poll was conducted from August 15 to August 21, among a random sample of 1745 participants. The sampling error is +/-1.1 points. This means that the levels of voter support for the Republican and the Democratic candidate do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be regarded with caution, as they may contain large biases. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, we recommend to use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that uses forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
For the following analysis, we translate Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 54.4% for Clinton and 45.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls has Clinton at 53.1% of the two-party vote. An average of recent polls has Clinton at 53.1% of the two-party vote. This value is 1.3 percentage points lower than respective numbers in the NBC News poll. This difference is outside the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 53.6% of the two-party vote. That is, the combined PollyVote is 0.8 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's margin of error.