Missouri: Trump with strong advantage in recent Emerson poll
Results of a new poll conducted by Emerson were announced. The poll asked interviewees from Missouri for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Emerson poll results
The results show that 34.0% of participants intend to give their vote to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 47.0% intend to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted between September 9 and September 13. The sample size was 600 likely voters. Given the poll's sampling error of +/-3.9 percentage points, the spread between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Single polls often incorporate substantial errors, and should be treated with caution. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, forecasting research recommends to use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that uses different methods and data.
To make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, you can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The corresponding figures are 42.0% for Clinton and 58.0% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Trump currently runs at 56.3% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Missouri. In comparison to his numbers in the Emerson poll Trump's poll average is 1.7 percentage points worse. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote predicts Trump to gain 54.3% of the two-party vote in Missouri. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 3.7 points below his polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error reveals that this difference is negligible.