Clinton leads in North Carolina by 4 points in latest Emerson poll
By Results of a new poll carried out by Emerson were circulated. The poll asked respondents from North Carolina for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Emerson poll results
The results show that 46.0% of respondents indicated that they would cast a ballot for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% plan to vote for real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from October 10 to October 12 among 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
As a general rule, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they often contain large errors. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, one can translate them into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 52.3% for Clinton and 47.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton can currently count on 51.7% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls in North Carolina. This value is 0.6 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the Emerson poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 49.8% of the two-party vote in North Carolina. This means that the PollyVote is 2.5 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error suggests that this difference is negligible.
