ABC News poll: Trump trails by a healthy margin
By ABC News released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
ABC News poll results
Of those who replied, 51.0% said that they plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 43.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from September 5 to September 8 with 642 participants. Considering the poll's sampling error of +/-4.5 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, one should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they may contain large errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in values of 54.3% for Clinton and 45.7% for Trump. In the most recent ABC News poll on August 27 Clinton obtained only 45.7%, while Trump obtained only 0.0%.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 52.0%. This value is 2.3 percentage points lower than corresponding numbers in the ABC News poll. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 52.8% of the two-party vote. That is, Polly's prediction is 1.5 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's margin of error.
