Latest OpinionWorks poll in Maryland: Trump trails by a overwhelming margin
By OpinionWorks released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Maryland were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
OpinionWorks poll results
The results show that 54.0% of participants are going to cast a ballot for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 25.0% intend to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from August 18 to August 30 among 754 likely voters. If one accounts for the poll's margin of error of +/-3.6 percentage points, the spread in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they sometimes incorporate large errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can convert them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 68.4% for Clinton and 31.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Maryland polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 69.5%. Compared to her numbers in the OpinionWorks poll Clinton's poll average is 1.1 percentage points higher. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 64.1% of the two-party vote in Maryland. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 4.3 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error indicates that this deviation is significant.
