Clinton leads by 6 points in latest Associated poll
By Results of a new national poll conducted by Associated were circulated. The poll asked interviewees for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Associated poll results
Of those who responded, 50.0% said that they plan to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% revealed that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between September 15 and September 16. The sample size was 1251 participants. The sampling error is +/-2.8 percentage points. This means that the poll results for both candidates differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they may incorporate large errors. Rather than relying on results from single polls, research in forecasting recommends to look at combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that draws upon different methods and data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, you can convert them into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields values of 53.2% for Clinton and 46.8% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 51.6%. Relative to numbers in the Associated poll Clinton's poll average is 1.6 percentage points worse. This difference 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 latest PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 52.5% of the two-party vote. This means that the combined PollyVote is 0.7 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's margin of error.
