Maryland: Clinton holds whopping advantage in recent OpinionWorks poll
By Results of a new poll carried out by OpinionWorks were published on October 10. The poll asked respondents from Maryland for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
OpinionWorks poll results
Of those who answered the question, 54.0% said that they would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 25.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between August 18 and August 30. The sample size was 754 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-3.6 points. This means that the levels of voter support for both parties' candidates differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they can incorporate large errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 68.4% for Clinton and 31.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Maryland has Clinton at 69.5% of the two-party vote. Relative to her numbers in the OpinionWorks poll Clinton's poll average is 1.1 percentage points higher. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 63.5% of the two-party vote in Maryland. That is, Polly's forecast is 4.9 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's margin of error.
