Clinton with clear lead in Reuters poll
By Reuters published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, participants were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Reuters poll results
According to the results, 42.0% of respondents indicated that they would give their vote to former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 35.0% intend to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from August 20 to August 24 with 1049 respondents. If one takes into account the poll's sampling error of +/-3.5 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. In general, one should not focus too much on the results of a single poll. Instead of relying on results from single polls, one should use combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that uses different methods and data.
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.
Results in comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 53.2%. This value is 1.4 percentage points lower than corresponding numbers in the Reuters 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 prediction
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 53.6% of the two-party vote. Hence, the PollyVote forecast is 1.0 point below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's sampling error.
