Pennsylvania: Trump and Clinton neck-and-neck in new Morning Call poll
By Morning Call released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Pennsylvania were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Morning Call poll results
Of those who replied, 44.0% said that they plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 41.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from September 19 to September 23, among a random sample of 486 likely voters. If one takes into account the poll's error margin of +/-5.0 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Hence, a good strategy is to not rely too much on the results of a single poll. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, we convert them into two-party vote shares. The respective figures are 51.8% for Clinton and 48.2% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
Clinton currently runs at 53.3% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Pennsylvania. Relative to her numbers in the Morning Call poll Clinton's poll average is 1.5 percentage points better. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 54.1% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 2.3 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error reveals that this difference is insignificant.
