Detroit Free Press poll in Michigan: Trump trails by a comfortable margin
Detroit Free Press published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Michigan were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Detroit Free Press poll results
Of those who responded, 46.0% said that they are going to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 36.0% declared that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from October 1 to October 3 among 600 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-4.0 percentage points, which means that the poll results for both parties' candidates differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls can incorporate substantial biases, and should be treated with caution. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 56.1% for Clinton and 43.9% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
If we look at an average of Michigan polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 57.0%. This value is 0.9 percentage points higher than her corresponding numbers in the Detroit Free Press poll. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 54.3% of the two-party vote in Michigan. Hence, Polly's prediction is 1.8 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's sampling error.