California: Big advantage for Clinton in new PPIC poll
PPIC released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from California were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
PPIC poll results
Of those who replied, 47.0% said that they would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 31.0% indicated that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from September 9 to September 18 with 1055 likely voters. The error margin is +/-4.5 points. This means that the poll results for Clinton and Trump differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. In general, don't be overly confident the results of an individual poll. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 60.3% for Clinton and 39.7% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 61.6% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in California. Compared to her numbers in the PPIC poll Clinton's poll average is 1.3 percentage points better. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 61.0% of the two-party vote in California. This means that Polly's forecast is 0.7 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's sampling error.