Pennsylvania: Trump and Clinton neck-and-neck in new Emerson*Emerson* poll
By Results of a new poll conducted by EmersonEmerson were published. The poll asked participants from Pennsylvania for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
EmersonEmerson poll results
The results show that 46.0% of participants plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 43.0% plan to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 25 to August 28 with 800 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-3.4 points, which means that the levels of voter support for the candidates of both parties do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, one should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they often contain large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, one should use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that incorporates different methods and data.
For the following comparison, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 51.7% for Clinton and 48.3% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Pennsylvania has Clinton at 54.5% of the two-party vote. Compared to her numbers in the EmersonEmerson poll Clinton's poll average is 2.8 percentage points better. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The most recent PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 54.4% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. That is, the PollyVote is 2.7 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error suggests that this deviation is negligible.
