New Hampshire: Sizable lead for Clinton in new WMUR/UNH*WMUR/UNH* poll
Results of a new poll conducted by WMUR/UNHWMUR/UNH were distributed. The poll asked interviewees from New Hampshire for whom they will vote: Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Historically, New Hampshire has been a purple state, in which neither the GOP nor the Democrats have had overwhelming support to secure that state's electoral college votes. Therefore, forecasts in this state are of particular interest.
WMUR/UNHWMUR/UNH poll results
Of those who responded, 49.0% said that they will vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 34.0% revealed that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from October 11 to October 17 among 770 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.5 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Hence, you should not put too much trust in the results of a single poll. Instead of trusting the results from single polls, the best practice scientific advice is to use combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that uses forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we convert them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in figures of 59.0% for Clinton and 41.0% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in New Hampshire sees Clinton at 54.3% of the two-party vote. This value is 4.8 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the WMUR/UNHWMUR/UNH poll. This margin is outside the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The latest PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 52.9% of the two-party vote in New Hampshire. That is, Polly's combined forecast is 6.1 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus outside the poll's error margin.