Tennessee: New Vanderbilt University poll has Clinton trailing by 11 points
Vanderbilt University released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Tennessee were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Vanderbilt University poll results
Of those who responded, 33.0% said that they plan to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 44.0% said that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from September 19 to October 2 with 1000 registered voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.4 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. In general, one should not have too much faith in the results of a single poll. Rather than trusting the results from single polls, we recommend to consult combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that includes different methods and data.
For the following analysis, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 42.9% for Clinton and 57.1% for Trump. For comparison: 44.3% was gained by Clinton in the Vanderbilt University poll on May 11, for Trump this result was only 55.7%.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Trump to gain 59.0% of the two-party vote in Tennessee. Hence, the PollyVote forecast is 1.9 points above his polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's sampling error.