New UPI/CVOTER poll has Trump trailing by 5 points
By UPI/CVOTER released the results of a new national poll, in which respondents were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
UPI/CVOTER poll results
Of those who replied, 51.0% said that they intend to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 46.0% said that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The Internet poll was carried out from October 11 to October 17 with 1326 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-2.7 points, which means that the poll results for the Democratic and the Republican candidate do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of a single poll. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 52.6% for Clinton and 47.4% for Trump. In the latest UPI/CVOTER poll on October 16 Clinton received only 52.1%, while Trump received 47.9%.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 53.6% of the major two-party vote according to an average of recent polls. This value is 1 percentage point higher than respective numbers in the UPI/CVOTER poll. This margin 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 foresees Clinton to gain 53.9% of the two-party vote. That is, Polly's prediction is 1.3 points above polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's sampling error.
