New FOX poll shows Clinton with 7 points lead
FOX released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
FOX poll results
Of those who responded, 49.0% said that they intend to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 42.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted via phone from October 15 to October 17, among a random sample of 912 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-3.0 percentage points, which means that the poll results for the Democratic and the Republican candidate differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they often contain large errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we convert them into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 53.9% for Clinton and 46.2% for Trump. In the most recent FOX poll on October 12 Clinton obtained 54.4%, while Trump obtained only 45.6%.
Results in comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 53.8%. Relative to numbers in the FOX poll Clinton's poll average is 0.1 percentage points worse. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier. The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 53.9% of the two-party vote.