ABC News poll: Clinton with 8 points lead
By ABC News released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
ABC News poll results
According to the results, 50.0% of interviewees indicated that they would cast a ballot for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 42.0% would vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted between August 1 and August 4. The sample size was 815 participants. The error margin is +/-4.0 points, which means that the poll results for Clinton and Trump do not differ significantly.
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 can incorporate large errors. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, we convert them into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 54.4% for Clinton and 45.7% for Trump. For comparison: Only 45.7% was obtained by Clinton in the ABC News poll on August 26, for Trump this number was only 0.0%.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls sees Clinton at 53.2% of the two-party vote. Relative to numbers in the ABC News poll Clinton's poll average is 1.2 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 53.7% of the two-party vote. That is, the combined PollyVote is 0.7 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin suggests that this deviation is insignificant.
