New The Simon Poll/SIU*The Simon Poll/SIU* poll in Illinois: Trump trails by a whopping margin
The Simon Poll/SIUThe Simon Poll/SIU published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Illinois were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
The Simon Poll/SIUThe Simon Poll/SIU poll results
Of those who answered the question, 53.0% said that they plan to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 28.0% said that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between September 27 and October 2. The sample size was 865 likely voters. If one accounts for the poll's margin of error of +/-3.3 percentage points, the spread in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they sometimes contain large errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we convert the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields figures of 65.4% for Clinton and 34.6% for Trump.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 56.5% of the two-party vote in Illinois. This means that the combined PollyVote is 8.9 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error reveals that this difference is significant.