New CBS poll shows Trump behind by 6 points
By CBS released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
CBS poll results
The results show that 49.0% of participants said that they would cast a ballot for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 43.0% said that they would cast a ballot for businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from September 28 to October 2, among a random sample of 1217 participants. There is a sampling error of +/-4.0 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they can contain large errors. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 53.3% for Clinton and 46.7% for Trump. On July 31 Clinton received only 46.6% in the CBS poll and Trump received only 0.0%.
Results vs. other polls
Looking at an average of polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 52.3%. Compared to numbers in the CBS poll Clinton's poll average is 1 percentage point worse. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 52.5% of the two-party vote. That is, the PollyVote is 0.8 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's margin of error.
