Missouri: Steady advantage for Trump in latest Emerson poll
Emerson published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from Missouri were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Emerson poll results
The results show that 39.0% of interviewees indicated that they would cast a ballot for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 47.0% plan to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from October 17 to October 19 with 600 likely voters. If one accounts for the poll's sampling error of +/-3.9 percentage points, the spread between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be regarded with caution, since they may contain substantial biases. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from benchmark methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. This procedure results in figures of 45.4% for Clinton and 54.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Missouri has Trump at 53.9% of the two-party vote. In comparison to his numbers in the Emerson poll Trump's poll average is 0.8 percentage points worse. This deviation is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The current PollyVote anticipates Trump to gain 53.5% of the two-party vote in Missouri. That is, Polly's prediction is 1.2 points below his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's margin of error.