Latest USA Today poll: Trump trails by a sustained margin
By USA Today published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, interviewees were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
USA Today poll results
Of those who answered the question, 48.0% said that they are going to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 41.0% declared that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 24 to August 29. A total of 1000 respondents responded. The error margin is +/-3.0 percentage points. This means that the poll results for the two candidates differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they may contain large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, the recommended strategy consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that uses forecasts from different methods, each of which uses different data.
To make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, you can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in figures of 53.9% for Clinton and 46.1% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
An average of recent polls sees Clinton at 53.3% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.6 percentage points lower than respective numbers in the USA Today poll. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 53.4% of the two-party vote. Hence, the PollyVote is 0.5 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error shows that this deviation is negligible.
