Ipsos/Reuters poll: Clinton behind by 7 points
By Ipsos/Reuters published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Ipsos/Reuters poll results
Of those who responded, 42.0% said that they plan to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 35.0% indicated that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The Internet poll was conducted from August 20 to August 24 with 1049 likely voters. The margin of error is +/-3.1 percentage points. This means that the poll results for Clinton and Trump differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be treated with caution, as they can include large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, the evidence-based approach is to use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that includes forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, you can convert them into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields values of 45.5% for Clinton and 54.6% for Trump. On August 26 Clinton obtained 54.6% in the Ipsos/Reuters poll and Trump obtained only 0.0%.
Results in comparison to other polls
Trump currently runs at 46.9% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls. In comparison to numbers in the Ipsos/Reuters poll Trump's poll average is 7.7 percentage points lower. This difference is outside the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote foresees Trump to gain 46.4% of the two-party vote. Hence, the PollyVote is 8.2 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error reveals that this difference is significant.
