Massachusetts: Clinton with solid advantage in latest UMass Amherst/WBZ*UMass Amherst/WBZ* poll
On October 10, UMass Amherst/WBZUMass Amherst/WBZ released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Massachusetts were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
UMass Amherst/WBZUMass Amherst/WBZ poll results
Of those who responded, 46.0% said that they intend to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 33.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 15 to September 20. A total of 700 likely voters responded. If one accounts for the poll's margin of error of +/-4.3 percentage points, the difference between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be treated with caution, as they often contain large biases. Instead of relying on results from single polls, the recommended strategy look at combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that includes different methods and data.
For the following analysis, we convert the candidates' raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 58.2% for Clinton and 41.8% for Trump.
Results compared to other polls
An average of recent polls in Massachusetts has Clinton at 63.5% of the two-party vote. This value is 5.3 percentage points higher than her respective numbers in the UMass Amherst/WBZUMass Amherst/WBZ poll. This deviation is outside the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The latest PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 63.9% of the two-party vote in Massachusetts. This means that the combined PollyVote is 5.7 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's error margin.