Virginia: New Christopher Newport Univ. Poll shows Clinton with 12 points lead
Results of a new poll administered by Christopher Newport Univ. were spread. The poll asked interviewees from Virginia for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
In Virginia, the popular vote is often close. Therefore, the state is commonly considered a swing state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
Christopher Newport Univ. 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 in the field between October 16 and October 19. The sample size was 834 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-3.9 percentage points. This means that the poll results for the Republican and the Democratic candidate differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they often contain large errors. Rather than relying on results from single polls, we recommend to consult combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that includes different methods and data.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, we translate them into two-party vote shares. The resulting figures are 57.7% for Clinton and 42.3% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
If we look at an average of Virginia polls, Clinton's current two-party vote share is at 54.7%. This value is 3 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the Christopher Newport Univ. 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 forecast
The most recent PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 54.5% of the two-party vote in Virginia. Hence, Polly's prediction is 3.2 points below her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error reveals that this difference is insignificant.