Clinton leads in Pennsylvania by 9 points in latest Suffolk University poll
By Results of a new poll carried out by Suffolk University were circulated. The poll asked respondents from Pennsylvania for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Suffolk University poll results
Of those who responded, 50.0% said that they intend to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 41.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from July 25 to July 27. A total of 500 likely voters responded. The sampling error is +/-4.4 points, which means that the levels of voter support for the candidates of both parties do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, one should not put too much trust in the results of an individual poll. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 45.1% for Clinton and 0.0% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Pennsylvania sees Clinton at 44.9% of the two-party vote. Compared to numbers in the Suffolk University poll Clinton's poll average is 0.2 percentage points worse. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The latest PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 45.5% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. That is, the PollyVote is 0.4 points above polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error reveals that this deviation is insignificant.
