Healthy lead for Clinton in latest NBC News poll
By NBC News published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
NBC News poll results
According to the results, 51.0% of participants intend to give their vote to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% plan to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 19 to September 25. A total of 1359 participants responded. There is a sampling error of +/-1.1 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be regarded with caution, because they can incorporate large biases. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we translate Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in figures of 53.7% for Clinton and 46.3% for Trump. On September 19 Clinton obtained 53.9% in the NBC News poll and Trump obtained only 46.1%.
Results vs. other polls
An average of recent polls sees Clinton at 51.4% of the two-party vote. This value is 2.3 percentage points lower than respective numbers in the NBC News poll. This difference is outside the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The latest PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 52.3% of the two-party vote. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 1.4 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin shows that this difference is significant.
