Clinton leads in Pennsylvania by 4 points in new Susquehanna poll
By Results of a new poll carried out by Susquehanna were spread. The poll asked respondents from Pennsylvania for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Susquehanna poll results
Of those who replied, 44.0% said that they would vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 40.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from October 4 to October 9 among 764 likely voters. The error margin is +/-3.5 points, which means that the levels of voter support for the candidates of both parties do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, you should not be too confident the results of an individual poll. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we convert Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. The corresponding figures are 52.4% for Clinton and 47.6% for Trump. In the most recent Susquehanna poll on August 4 Clinton obtained only 44.1%, while Trump obtained only 0.0%.
Comparison to other polls
Looking at an average of Pennsylvania polls, Clinton's two-party vote share is currently at 52.9%. Relative to her numbers in the Susquehanna poll Clinton's poll average is 0.5 percentage points better. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 54.0% of the two-party vote in Pennsylvania. That is, Polly's combined forecast is 1.6 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's sampling error indicates that this deviation is insignificant.
