Minnesota: 6 points lead for Clinton in latest Star Tribune/Mason-Dixon poll
Star Tribune/Mason-Dixon published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Minnesota were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Star Tribune/Mason-Dixon poll results
According to the results, 44.0% of respondents intend to cast a ballot for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 38.0% are going to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from September 12 to September 14 with 625 likely voters. If one takes into account the poll's margin of error of +/-4.0 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls should be interpreted with caution, because they can incorporate substantial errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can translate them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 53.7% for Clinton and 46.3% for Trump. For comparison: Only 53.1% was obtained by Clinton in the Star Tribune/Mason-Dixon poll on January 20, for Trump this result was 46.9%.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Minnesota has Clinton at 52.4% of the two-party vote. Compared to her numbers in the Star Tribune/Mason-Dixon poll Clinton's poll average is 1.4 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 54.2% of the two-party vote in Minnesota. Hence, the combined PollyVote is 0.5 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's error margin.