Significant lead for Clinton in new NBC News poll
By Results of a new national poll administered by NBC News were announced. The poll asked participants for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
NBC News poll results
Of those who replied, 50.0% said that they intend to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 40.0% said that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out between October 8 and October 10. The sample size was 806 participants. There is a sampling error of +/-3.5 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. As a result, one should not be overly confident the results of a single poll. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, you can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The corresponding figures are 55.6% for Clinton and 44.4% for Trump. To compare: Only 53.7% was obtained by Clinton in the NBC News poll on October 9, for Trump this number was 46.3%.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 53.8%. Relative to numbers in the NBC News poll Clinton's poll average is 1.9 percentage points lower. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's forecast
The latest PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 53.5% of the two-party vote. This means that Polly's forecast is 2.1 points below polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's error margin.
