Tennessee: Substantial lead for Trump in new Vanderbilt University*Vanderbilt* poll
Results of a new poll conducted by Vanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt were published. The poll asked interviewees from Tennessee for whom they will vote: Donald·Trump or Hillary·Clinton.
Vanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt poll results
Of those who responded, 33.0% said that they would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 44.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 19 to October 2 with 1000 registered voters. Considering the poll's sampling error of +/-3.4 percentage points, the difference in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they often contain large errors. At least, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 42.9% for Clinton and 57.1% for Trump.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote forecasts Trump to gain 59.0% of the two-party vote in Tennessee. This means that the combined PollyVote is 1.9 points above his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's sampling error.