New Hampshire: Marginal lead for Clinton in recent Emerson poll
By Results of a new poll conducted by Emerson were spread. The poll asked respondents from New Hampshire for whom they will vote: Donald·Trump or Hillary·Clinton.
In New Hampshire, the election outcome is often close. This is why the state is commonly viewed as a battleground state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
Emerson poll results
Of those who answered the question, 42.0% said that they are going to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 37.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 3 to September 5 with 600 likely voters. Taking into account the poll's error margin of +/-3.9 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they sometimes contain large errors. Rather, 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 two-party vote shares. The respective figures are 53.2% for Clinton and 46.8% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
Clinton can currently count on 54.8% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls in New Hampshire. This value is 1.6 percentage points higher than her respective numbers in the Emerson poll. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The latest PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 54.4% of the two-party vote in New Hampshire. Hence, Polly's prediction is 1.2 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error indicates that this difference is negligible.
