Maine: Virtual tie between Trump and Clinton in latest Press Herald/UNH*Press Herald/UNH* poll
By Results of a new poll conducted by Press Herald/UNHPress Herald/UNH were distributed. The poll asked respondents from Maine for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Press Herald/UNHPress Herald/UNH poll results
Of those who replied, 40.0% said that they plan to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 37.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out between September 15 and September 20. The sample size was 513 likely voters. If one accounts for the poll's error margin of +/-4.0 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Thus, as a general rule, a good strategy is to not rely too much on the results of a single poll. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, the recommended strategy look at combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that relies on forecasts from different methods, each of which relies on different data.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 52.0% for Clinton and 48.1% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Maine polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 53.2%. Compared to her numbers in the Press Herald/UNHPress Herald/UNH poll Clinton's poll average is 1.2 percentage points better. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The most recent PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 54.7% of the two-party vote in Maine. Hence, the PollyVote forecast is 2.7 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's sampling error.
