Clinton leads in Connecticut by 15 points in latest Emerson poll
Results of a new poll carried out by Emerson were distributed. The poll asked participants from Connecticut for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Emerson poll results
Of those who responded, 50.0% said that they will vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 35.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from September 2 to September 5 among 1000 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.0 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, as they sometimes incorporate large errors. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, the evidence-based approach is to consult combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that incorporates 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 58.8% for Clinton and 41.2% for Trump.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The current PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 59.5% of the two-party vote in Connecticut. Hence, the combined PollyVote is 0.7 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's error margin indicates that this deviation is insignificant.