Louisiana: New JMC Analytics poll shows Trump with 7 points lead
Results of a new poll administered by JMC Analytics were circulated. The poll asked participants from Louisiana for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
JMC Analytics poll results
According to the results, 38.0% of participants said that they would give their vote to former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 45.0% plan to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from October 11 to October 15, among a random sample of 800 likely voters. 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. Thus, as a general rule, a good strategy is to not have too much confidence in the results of a single poll. Instead of relying on results from single polls, the best practice is to consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that uses different methods and data.
For the following analysis, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 45.8% for Clinton and 54.2% for Trump. In the most recent JMC Analytics poll on September 24 Clinton obtained only 43.8%, while Trump obtained 56.3%.
Results compared to other polls
Looking at an average of Louisiana polls, Trump's current two-party vote share is at 57.0%. Compared to his numbers in the JMC Analytics poll Trump's poll average is 2.8 percentage points better. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The latest PollyVote anticipates Trump to gain 58.8% of the two-party vote in Louisiana. This means that Polly's combined forecast is 4.6 points above his polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error shows that this difference is significant.