Massachusetts: 26 points lead for Clinton in latest WBUR/MassINC poll
By Results of a new poll conducted by WBUR/MassINC were circulated on October 12. The poll asked participants from Massachusetts for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
WBUR/MassINC poll results
Of those who answered the question, 57.0% said that they would vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 31.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out between October 13 and October 16. The sample size was 502 likely voters. The error margin is +/-4.4 percentage points. This means that the levels of voter support for the Democratic and the Republican candidate differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls often include large biases, and should be treated with caution. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 64.8% for Clinton and 35.2% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently runs at 64.2% of the two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Massachusetts. Relative to her numbers in the WBUR/MassINC poll Clinton's poll average is 0.6 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The latest PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 64.0% of the two-party vote in Massachusetts. That is, the combined PollyVote is 0.8 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error suggests that this difference is insignificant.
