Latest Emerson poll in Arizona: Trump and Clinton in a virtual tie
By Emerson published the results of a new poll. In this poll, participants from Arizona were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Emerson poll results
According to the results, 44.0% of participants intend to cast a ballot for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% plan to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from October 2 to October 4 among 600 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.9 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, one should not focus too much on the results of an individual poll. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 51.2% for Clinton and 48.8% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 49.6% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Arizona. Relative to his numbers in the Emerson poll Clinton's poll average is 1.6 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 46.7% of the two-party vote in Arizona. This means that Polly's combined forecast is 4.5 points below his polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error shows that this difference is significant.
