Pennsylvania: Strong advantage for Clinton in new Franklin & Marshall poll
Franklin & Marshall published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Franklin & Marshall poll results
The results show that 49.0% of interviewees are going to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 38.0% are going to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from July 29 to August 2, among a random sample of 389 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-6.3 percentage points. This means that the levels of voter support for Trump and Clinton do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be interpreted with caution, because they often contain large errors. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 56.3% for Clinton and 43.7% for Trump. In the most recent Franklin & Marshall poll on August 28 Clinton obtained only 43.7%, while Trump obtained only 0.0%.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently runs at 54.6% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Pennsylvania. Relative to her numbers in the Franklin & Marshall poll Clinton's poll average is 1.7 percentage points worse. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 54.5% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. This means that the combined PollyVote is 1.8 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error suggests that this difference is insignificant.