Louisiana: 16 points lead for Trump in new SMOR*SMOR* poll
By SMORSMOR published the results of a new poll on October 10. In this poll, participants from Louisiana were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
SMORSMOR poll results
The results show that 33.0% of interviewees will cast a ballot for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 49.0% intend to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from September 15 to September 17 with 500 likely voters. 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
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they sometimes contain large errors. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we translate Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 40.2% for Clinton and 59.8% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Trump can currently count on 58.1% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Louisiana. Compared to his numbers in the SMORSMOR poll Trump's poll average is 1.7 percentage points lower. This margin is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The current PollyVote foresees Trump to gain 59.0% of the two-party vote in Louisiana. This means that Polly's combined forecast is 0.8 points below his polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin reveals that this difference is insignificant.
