New Monmouth poll in Wisconsin: Trump trails by a negligible margin
By Results of a new poll carried out by Monmouth were published. The poll asked respondents from Wisconsin for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Monmouth poll results
Of those who replied, 43.0% said that they will vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 38.0% revealed that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 27 to August 30. A total of 404 likely voters responded. Given the poll's margin of error of +/-4.9 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they sometimes contain large errors. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, one should rely on combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that draws upon different methods and data.
For the following comparison, we convert the candidates' raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 53.1% for Clinton and 46.9% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
An average of recent polls in Wisconsin sees Clinton at 53.1% of the two-party vote. In comparison to her numbers in the Monmouth poll Clinton's poll average is 0 percentage points higher. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 54.4% of the two-party vote in Wisconsin. This means that Polly's prediction is 1.3 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's error margin.
