Trump leads by 7 points in latest Suffolk/USA Today poll
By Suffolk/USA Today released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Suffolk/USA Today poll results
Of those who responded, 48.0% said that they intend to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 41.0% said that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The phone poll was in the field between August 24 and August 29. The sample size was 1000 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.2 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Single polls may contain large biases, and should be treated with caution. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, we convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 46.1% for Clinton and 53.9% for Trump. In the most recent Suffolk/USA Today poll on August 3 Clinton obtained 53.5%, while Trump obtained only 46.5%.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls has Trump at 47.4% of the two-party vote. In comparison to numbers in the Suffolk/USA Today poll Trump's poll average is 6.6 percentage points worse. This margin is outside the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote forecasts Trump to gain 46.5% of the two-party vote. That is, the combined PollyVote is 7.4 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin indicates that this deviation is significant.
