Pennsylvania: Steady advantage for Clinton in recent Monmouth poll
By Monmouth published the results of a new poll. In this poll, participants from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Monmouth poll results
According to the results, 48.0% of respondents said that they plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 40.0% plan to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from August 26 to August 29 among 402 likely voters. The margin of error is +/-4.9 points. This means that the levels of voter support for both candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. In general, you should not be too confident the results of a single poll. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 54.6% for Clinton and 45.5% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
An average of recent polls in Pennsylvania has Clinton at 54.5% of the two-party vote. In comparison to her numbers in the Monmouth poll Clinton's poll average is 0.1 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The latest PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 54.4% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. That is, Polly's prediction is 0.2 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's margin of error.
