Magellan (R) poll in Colorado: Trump trails by a small margin
By Results of a new poll carried out by Magellan (R) were spread. The poll asked participants from Colorado for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Colorado is traditionally a swing state, where the two major political parties have historically achieved similar voter support. Therefore, the election outcome in that state is considered important in determining the overall result of the presidential election.
Magellan (R) poll results
Of those who responded, 41.0% said that they plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 36.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from August 29 to August 31 among 500 likely voters. The margin of error is +/-4.4 points. This means that the poll results for the candidates of both parties do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be regarded with caution, since they may contain large errors. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This procedure results in figures of 53.3% for Clinton and 46.8% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Colorado polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 56.1%. Compared to her numbers in the Magellan (R) poll Clinton's poll average is 2.8 percentage points better. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 56.2% of the two-party vote in Colorado. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 2.9 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin indicates that this difference is insignificant.
