Emerson poll in Vermont: Clinton with 21 points lead
By Emerson released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Vermont were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Emerson poll results
Of those who answered the question, 47.0% said that they are going to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 26.0% indicated that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
This poll was conducted from September 2 to September 5, among a random sample of 600 likely voters. There is a sampling error of +/-3.9 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. Therefore, as a general rule, you should not have too much confidence in the results of a single poll. Rather than relying on results from single polls, forecasting research recommends to look at combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that uses forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
For the following comparison, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 64.4% for Clinton and 35.6% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Vermont has Clinton at 68.6% of the two-party vote. This value is 4.2 percentage points higher than her respective numbers in the Emerson poll. This difference is outside the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The latest PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 67.4% of the two-party vote in Vermont. That is, Polly's prediction is 3.0 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus in line with the poll's sampling error.
