Washington: Sizable advantage for Clinton in latest Elway poll
By Elway released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Washington were asked for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Elway poll results
Of those who replied, 43.0% said that they will vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 24.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out between August 9 and August 13. The sample size was 500 registered voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.5 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they often incorporate large errors. Rather than relying on results from single polls, you should consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that includes different methods and data.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 64.2% for Clinton and 35.8% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Washington sees Clinton at 59.1% of the two-party vote. In comparison to her numbers in the Elway poll Clinton's poll average is 5.1 percentage points lower. This margin is outside the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 58.1% of the two-party vote in Washington. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 6.1 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin reveals that this deviation is significant.
