New Morning Consult poll: Trump trails by a steady margin
By Morning Consult released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Morning Consult poll results
Of those who answered the question, 46.0% said that they are going to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 39.0% declared that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out via Internet from September 30 to October 2 among 1778 likely voters. If one takes into account the poll's error margin of +/-2.4 percentage points, the gap in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be regarded with caution, since they often include substantial errors. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 54.1% for Clinton and 45.9% for Trump. On September 27 Clinton obtained only 52.3% in the Morning Consult poll and Trump obtained 47.7%.
Results vs. other polls
Clinton currently achieves 52.0% of the major two-party vote in an average of recent polls. Relative to numbers in the Morning Consult poll Clinton's poll average is 2.1 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The latest PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 52.4% of the two-party vote. Hence, Polly's combined forecast is 1.7 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's sampling error.
