New NBC/SurveyMonkey poll shows Clinton behind by 6 points
By Results of a new national poll conducted by NBC/SurveyMonkey were distributed. The poll asked interviewees for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
NBC/SurveyMonkey poll results
The results show that 48.0% of respondents said that they would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 42.0% would vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted via Internet from August 22 to August 28 among 24104 participants. There is a sampling error of +/-0.6 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Single polls often include substantial biases, and should be treated with caution. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, one should rely on combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that uses forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 46.7% for Clinton and 53.3% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Trump's two-party vote share is currently at 46.8%. Relative to numbers in the NBC/SurveyMonkey poll Trump's poll average is 6.5 percentage points worse. This difference is outside the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Trump to gain 46.4% of the two-party vote. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 6.9 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error suggests that this difference is significant.
