WBUR/MassINC poll in Massachusetts: Clinton holds overwhelming advantage
By WBUR/MassINC published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Massachusetts were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
WBUR/MassINC poll results
According to the results, 60.0% of respondents would cast a ballot for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 31.0% would cast a ballot for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 7 to September 10. A total of 506 likely voters responded. There is a sampling error of +/-4.4 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, one should not have too much faith in the results of an individual poll. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, we convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in figures of 65.9% for Clinton and 34.1% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 61.7% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Massachusetts. This value is 4.3 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the WBUR/MassINC poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The current PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 63.1% of the two-party vote in Massachusetts. This means that Polly's forecast is 2.8 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's error margin.
