Latest Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania: Trump trails by a healthy margin
Quinnipiac released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Quinnipiac poll results
Of those who replied, 52.0% said that they would vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 42.0% declared that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from July 30 to August 7, among a random sample of 815 likely voters. Given the poll's sampling error of +/-3.4 percentage points, the difference in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Single polls often incorporate large errors, which is why they should be treated with caution. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 55.3% for Clinton and 44.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently runs at 54.5% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Pennsylvania. This value is 0.8 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the Quinnipiac poll. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 54.4% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. Hence, the combined PollyVote is 0.9 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error indicates that this deviation is insignificant.