Clinton leads in Michigan by 10 points in new FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell poll
By FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell published the results of a new poll. In this poll, participants from Michigan were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell poll results
According to the results, 49.0% of interviewees intend to cast a ballot for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 39.0% would vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from August 9 to August 10 with 1314 likely voters. The margin of error is +/-2.7 percentage points. This means that the poll results for both 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, since they can incorporate large errors. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, the best practice scientific advice is to look at combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that relies on different methods and data.
For the following analysis, we translate Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields figures of 55.7% for Clinton and 44.3% for Trump. In the most recent FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell poll on April 27 Clinton obtained only 50.0%, while Trump obtained 50.0%.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Michigan sees Clinton at 54.3% of the two-party vote. This value is 1.4 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The latest PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 54.4% of the two-party vote in Michigan. That is, the PollyVote is 1.3 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's error margin.
