WBUR/MassINC poll in Massachusetts: Trump trails by a whopping margin
WBUR/MassINC published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Massachusetts were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
WBUR/MassINC poll results
Of those who replied, 60.0% said that they intend to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 31.0% declared that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from September 7 to September 10 with 506 likely voters. If one takes into account the poll's sampling error of +/-4.4 percentage points, the spread in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be interpreted with caution, since they may include substantial errors. At the very least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 65.9% for Clinton and 34.1% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Massachusetts polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 63.5%. This value is 2.4 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the WBUR/MassINC poll. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The latest PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 64.1% of the two-party vote in Massachusetts. Hence, the PollyVote forecast is 1.8 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's error margin.