New Reuters poll shows Clinton with 7 points lead
By Reuters published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, participants were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Reuters poll results
Of those who answered the question, 42.0% said that they would vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 35.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between August 20 and August 24. The sample size was 1049 participants. The sampling error is +/-3.5 points. This means that the poll results for the two candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they may incorporate large errors. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can convert them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 54.6% for Clinton and 45.5% for Trump. On August 26 Clinton obtained only 45.5% in the Reuters poll and Trump obtained only 0.0%.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton is currently at 53.2% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls. Compared to numbers in the Reuters poll Clinton's poll average is 1.4 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 53.7% of the two-party vote. This means that the combined PollyVote is 0.9 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's error margin.
