Illinois: Clinton holds overwhelming lead in The Simon Poll/SIU poll
Results of a new poll carried out by The Simon Poll/SIU were published. The poll asked participants from Illinois for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
The Simon Poll/SIU poll results
Of those who responded, 53.0% said that they will vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 28.0% revealed that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from September 27 to October 2, among a random sample of 865 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.3 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the gap between both candidates is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Thus, as a general rule, a good strategy is to not be overly confident the results of a single poll. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
In order to make the results comparable to benchmark forecasts, you can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 65.4% for Clinton and 34.6% for Trump.
The poll compared with PollyVote's prediction
The most recent PollyVote expects Clinton to gain 59.3% of the two-party vote in Illinois. That is, the combined PollyVote is 6.1 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore outside the poll's error margin.