Maine: New Emerson poll shows Trump trailing by 4 points
Emerson released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Maine were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Emerson poll results
Of those who responded, 46.0% said that they plan to vote for former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, while 42.0% declared that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from October 28 to October 30 with 750 likely voters. The error margin is +/-3.5 points, which means that the levels of voter support for both candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Therefore, as a general rule, don't put too much trust in the results of a single poll. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following analysis, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 52.3% for Clinton and 47.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 54.8% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Maine. This value is 2.5 percentage points higher than her corresponding numbers in the Emerson poll. This margin is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 55.7% of the two-party vote in Maine. This means that Polly's prediction is 3.4 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's margin of error.