California: Clinton holds huge advantage in latest LA Times/USC poll
By LA Times/USC published the results of a new poll. In this poll, participants from California were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
LA Times/USC poll results
According to the results, 56.0% of participants would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 30.0% would vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from May 19 to May 31. A total of 1500 registered voters responded. There is a sampling error of +/-2.9 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Thus, as a general rule, you should not put too much trust in the results of a single poll. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, the best practice scientific advice is to consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that incorporates forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
For the following analysis, we convert the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 65.1% for Clinton and 34.9% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
Clinton is currently at 63.4% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in California. This value is 1.8 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the LA Times/USC poll. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 61.3% of the two-party vote in California. Hence, the combined PollyVote is 3.8 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error suggests that this difference is significant.
