Monmouth poll in New Hampshire: Trump trails by 4 points
By Monmouth published the results of a new poll on October 12. In this poll, interviewees from New Hampshire were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
New Hampshire is traditionally a swing state, where Republicans and Democrats have historically won similar voter support. This is why the election outcome in that state is considered crucial in determining who will win the majority of electoral votes.
Monmouth poll results
According to the results, 46.0% of interviewees will vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% plan to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from October 22 to October 25 among 401 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.9 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they may contain large errors. At the very least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 52.3% for Clinton and 47.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in New Hampshire has Clinton at 54.5% of the two-party vote. Relative to her numbers in the Monmouth poll Clinton's poll average is 2.2 percentage points better. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The latest PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 54.2% of the two-party vote in New Hampshire. This means that the PollyVote is 1.9 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's margin of error.
