New Emerson*Emerson* poll in Pennsylvania: Trump and Clinton in a dead heat
By Results of a new poll conducted by EmersonEmerson were released. The poll asked interviewees from Pennsylvania for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
EmersonEmerson poll results
Of those who answered the question, 46.0% said that they will vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 43.0% indicated that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted between August 25 and August 28. The sample size was 800 likely voters. The margin of error is +/-3.4 points, which means that the levels of voter support for the two candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. In general, one should not have too much faith in the results of a single poll. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we convert them into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 51.7% for Clinton and 48.3% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of Pennsylvania polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 54.6%. This value is 2.9 percentage points higher than her respective numbers in the EmersonEmerson poll. 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 latest PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 54.5% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. This means that Polly's forecast is 2.8 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's sampling error.
