Vermont: Huge advantage for Clinton in Emerson poll
Results of a new poll carried out by Emerson were circulated. The poll asked participants from Vermont for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Emerson poll results
Of those who responded, 47.0% said that they are going to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 26.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 2 to September 5 with 600 likely voters. Taking into account the poll's sampling error of +/-3.9 percentage points, the gap in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they can contain large errors. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 64.4% for Clinton and 35.6% for Trump.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 63.8% of the two-party vote in Vermont. This means that the combined PollyVote is 0.6 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's sampling error.