New Magellan Strategies (R) poll in Colorado: Clinton with narrow advantage
By Magellan Strategies (R) released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Colorado were asked for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
In Colorado, the election outcome is usually 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.
Magellan Strategies (R) poll results
Of those who replied, 40.0% said that they would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 35.0% indicated that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from October 12 to October 13 among 500 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-4.4 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
Single polls often contain substantial errors, which is why they should be treated with caution. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we convert them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 53.3% for Clinton and 46.7% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Colorado sees Clinton at 54.0% of the two-party vote. In comparison to her numbers in the Magellan Strategies (R) poll Clinton's poll average is 0.7 percentage points higher. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 54.9% of the two-party vote in Colorado. Hence, the PollyVote forecast is 1.6 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error suggests that this deviation is negligible.
