Maryland: Clinton holds whopping advantage in latest OpinionWorks poll
OpinionWorks published the results of a new poll. In this poll, participants from Maryland were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
OpinionWorks poll results
According to the results, 54.0% of participants said that they intend to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whereas 25.0% intend to vote for billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was in the field between August 18 and August 30. The sample size was 754 likely voters. Taking into account the poll's sampling error of +/-3.6 percentage points, the spread in voter support is statistically significant.
Putting the results in context
Single polls should be treated with caution, since they may contain large errors. Rather than relying on results from single polls, the best practice scientific advice is to look at combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that draws upon different methods and data.
For the following comparison, we convert the candidates' raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure results in figures of 68.4% for Clinton and 31.7% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Maryland sees Clinton at 69.5% of the two-party vote. This value is 1.1 percentage points higher than her corresponding numbers in the OpinionWorks poll. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The latest PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 66.1% of the two-party vote in Maryland. That is, the PollyVote forecast is 2.3 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's error margin.