WBUR/MassINC poll in Massachusetts: Trump trails by 29 points
WBUR/MassINC released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Massachusetts were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
WBUR/MassINC poll results
According to the results, 60.0% of participants are going to cast a ballot for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 31.0% would vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 7 to September 10 with 506 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.4 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Hence, one should not focus too much on the results of a single poll. Instead of relying on results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to consult combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that uses different methods and data.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The respective figures are 65.9% for Clinton and 34.1% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton is currently at 63.2% of the major two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Massachusetts. Relative to her numbers in the WBUR/MassINC poll Clinton's poll average is 2.7 percentage points worse. This deviation 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 foresees Clinton to gain 64.0% of the two-party vote in Massachusetts. That is, Polly's combined forecast is 1.9 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's margin of error.