New Emerson poll in Arizona: Clinton and Trump virtually tied
By Results of a new poll conducted by Emerson were spread on October 10. The poll asked participants from Arizona for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Emerson poll results
The results show that 44.0% of interviewees plan to give their vote to former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% plan to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted between October 2 and October 4. The sample size was 600 likely voters. If one accounts for the poll's sampling error of +/-3.9 percentage points, the results reflect a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be interpreted with caution, as they can include substantial biases. Instead of relying on results from single polls, the recommended strategy look at combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that uses forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 51.2% for Clinton and 48.8% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 49.6% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Arizona. Relative to his numbers in the Emerson poll Clinton's poll average is 1.6 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 46.8% of the two-party vote in Arizona. This means that Polly's combined forecast is 4.4 points below his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus outside the poll's margin of error.
