Michigan: Clinton with sustained advantage in recent Detroit Free Press poll
By Detroit Free Press released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Michigan were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Detroit Free Press poll results
Of those who responded, 46.0% said that they would vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 36.0% said that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from October 1 to October 3, among a random sample of 600 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.0 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they sometimes incorporate large errors. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields values of 56.1% for Clinton and 43.9% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of Michigan polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 57.0%. Compared to her numbers in the Detroit Free Press poll Clinton's poll average is 0.9 percentage points higher. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The latest PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 54.6% of the two-party vote in Michigan. This means that the PollyVote forecast is 1.5 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's sampling error.
