NBC/SurveyMonkey poll: Clinton with small lead
By Results of a new national poll carried out by NBC/SurveyMonkey were released. The poll asked participants for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
NBC/SurveyMonkey poll results
The results show that 50.0% of respondents are going to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% are going to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted via Internet from September 26 to October 2 among 26925 likely voters. The margin of error is +/-0.6 percentage points, which means that the levels of voter support for Clinton and Trump differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be interpreted with caution, since they may include large biases. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The corresponding figures are 53.2% for Clinton and 46.8% for Trump. On September 25 Clinton obtained 53.7% in the NBC/SurveyMonkey poll and Trump obtained only 46.3%.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton is currently at 52.3% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls. Compared to numbers in the NBC/SurveyMonkey poll Clinton's poll average is 1 percentage point lower. This deviation is outside the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 52.5% of the two-party vote. Hence, Polly's prediction is 0.7 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's sampling error.
