Latest Suffolk University poll in North Carolina: Clinton and Trump in a tossup
By Suffolk University published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from North Carolina were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Suffolk University poll results
Of those who answered the question, 41.0% said that they are going to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from September 5 to September 7, among a random sample of 500 likely voters. Considering the poll's error margin of +/-4.4 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Hence, you should not rely too much on the results of a single poll. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, one can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in figures of 48.2% for Clinton and 51.8% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of North Carolina polls, Trump's current two-party vote share is at 50.2%. This value is 1.6 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the Suffolk University poll. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote foresees Trump to gain 50.8% of the two-party vote in North Carolina. That is, the combined PollyVote is 1.0 point below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin suggests that this difference is negligible.
