10 points lead for Clinton in latest NBC/WSJ poll
By NBC/WSJ released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
NBC/WSJ poll results
Of those who replied, 50.0% said that they plan to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 40.0% declared that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from October 8 to October 10 via phone. A total of 806 likely voters responded. If one takes into account the poll's error margin of +/-3.5 percentage points, the spread in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, one should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they can contain large errors. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, we translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 55.6% for Clinton and 44.4% for Trump. On October 9 Clinton obtained 57.8% in the NBC/WSJ poll and Trump obtained only 42.2%.
Results compared to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 53.7%. Compared to numbers in the NBC/WSJ poll Clinton's poll average is 1.9 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 52.9% of the two-party vote. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 2.7 points below polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin suggests that this difference is insignificant.
