Washington: 19 points lead for Clinton in new Elway poll
By Results of a new poll conducted by Elway were published. The poll asked participants from Washington for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Elway poll results
According to the results, 43.0% of interviewees plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 24.0% are going to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between August 9 and August 13. The sample size was 500 registered voters. Considering the poll's sampling error of +/-4.5 percentage points, the difference between both candidates 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, since they can contain large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, the recommended strategy use combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that draws upon forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 64.2% for Clinton and 35.8% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Washington polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 58.4%. Relative to her numbers in the Elway poll Clinton's poll average is 5.8 percentage points lower. This difference is outside the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The current PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 57.6% of the two-party vote in Washington. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 6.6 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's error margin.
