Christopher Newport Univ.*CNU* poll in Virginia: Trump behind by 12 points
On October 19, Christopher Newport Univ.CNU released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Virginia were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
In Virginia, the popular vote is often decided by a narrow margin. This is the reason why the state is commonly referred to as a battleground state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
Christopher Newport Univ.CNU poll results
Of those who responded, 45.0% said that they are going to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 33.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from October 16 to October 19 among 834 likely voters. Considering the poll's error margin of +/-3.9 percentage points, the difference between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Individual polls may contain large errors, which is why they should be interpreted with caution. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 57.7% for Clinton and 42.3% for Trump. In the most recent Christopher Newport Univ.CNU poll on October 14 Clinton received 60.3%, while Trump received only 39.7%.
Results compared to other polls
An average of recent polls in Virginia has Clinton at 56.0% of the two-party vote. This value is 1.7 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the Christopher Newport Univ.CNU poll. This margin is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The latest PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 54.1% of the two-party vote in Virginia. Hence, Polly's prediction is 3.6 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error shows that this difference is negligible.