Latest Monmouth poll in Pennsylvania: Clinton holds comfortable advantage
By Results of a new poll conducted by Monmouth were distributed. The poll asked participants from Pennsylvania for whom they will vote: Donald·Trump or Hillary·Clinton.
Monmouth poll results
The results show that 48.0% of participants indicated that they would cast a ballot for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 40.0% indicated that they would cast a ballot for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 26 to August 29. A total of 402 likely voters responded. The error margin is +/-4.9 percentage points. This means that the poll results for both parties' candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls can include substantial biases, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. Rather than relying on results from single polls, the best practice is to use combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that uses forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 54.6% for Clinton and 45.5% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Pennsylvania polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 53.8%. Relative to her numbers in the Monmouth poll Clinton's poll average is 0.8 percentage points lower. This deviation is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 54.2% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. This means that Polly's prediction is 0.4 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's margin of error.
