Clinton leads by 5 points in latest Economist poll
By Results of a new national poll carried out by Economist were announced. The poll asked participants for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Economist poll results
The results show that 47.0% of participants said that they would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% are going to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 27 to August 29 with 1119 participants. The margin of error is +/-4.0 percentage points. This means that the levels of voter support for Trump and Clinton do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they sometimes incorporate large errors. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, you can translate them into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields values of 52.8% for Clinton and 47.2% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton is currently at 53.4% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls. This value is 0.6 percentage points higher than corresponding numbers in the Economist poll. This difference 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 foresees Clinton to gain 53.4% of the two-party vote. Hence, the PollyVote is 0.6 points above polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's error margin.
