SMOR poll in Louisiana: Clinton trails by 15 points
SMOR published the results of a new poll. In this poll, respondents from Louisiana were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
SMOR poll results
The results show that 35.0% of interviewees will vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 50.0% are going to vote for businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between October 19 and October 21. The sample size was 500 likely voters. The error margin is +/-4.4 points, which means that the levels of voter support for the Republican and the Democratic candidate differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
Single polls may include large biases, and 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 translate Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This procedure yields values of 41.2% for Clinton and 58.8% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Trump currently runs at 58.2% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Louisiana. Relative to his numbers in the SMOR poll Trump's poll average is 0.6 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote expects Trump to gain 58.5% of the two-party vote in Louisiana. Hence, Polly's prediction is 0.3 points below his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore in line with the poll's sampling error.