PPP poll: Clinton with 5 points lead
By PPP published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, participants were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
PPP poll results
According to the results, 48.0% of respondents are going to cast a ballot for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 43.0% plan to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 26 to August 28. A total of 881 participants responded. There is a sampling error of +/-3.3 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
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, since they may incorporate large errors. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we translate Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 52.8% for Clinton and 47.3% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls has Clinton at 52.3% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.5 percentage points lower than corresponding numbers in the PPP poll. This margin is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The latest PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 53.2% of the two-party vote. Hence, Polly's prediction is 0.4 points above polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin indicates that this difference is negligible.
