South Carolina: Trump holds solid advantage in recent Trafalgar Group (R)*Trafalgar (R)* poll
By Trafalgar Group (R)Trafalgar (R) published the results of a new poll on October 8. In this poll, respondents from South Carolina were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trafalgar Group (R)Trafalgar (R) poll results
According to the results, 38.0% of participants said that they would give their vote to former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 53.0% intend to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between September 6 and September 12. The sample size was 1247 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-2.8 percentage points. This means that the poll results for both parties' candidates differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls often incorporate substantial biases, which is why they should be treated with caution. Rather than relying on results from single polls, forecasting research recommends to use combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that relies on forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 41.8% for Clinton and 58.2% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in South Carolina sees Trump at 54.4% of the two-party vote. This value is 3.8 percentage points lower than his respective numbers in the Trafalgar Group (R)Trafalgar (R) poll. This difference is outside the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote anticipates Trump to gain 55.4% of the two-party vote in South Carolina. This means that Polly's prediction is 2.8 points below his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's error margin.
