MPRC (D) poll in Maine: Clinton with 10 points lead
MPRC (D) published the results of a new poll. In this poll, interviewees from Maine were asked for whom they will vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
MPRC (D) poll results
Of those who answered the question, 49.0% said that they are going to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 39.0% declared that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out from October 14 to October 15 with 890 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
In general, however, a good strategy is to not have too much faith in the results of single polls, since they may incorporate large errors. Rather, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 55.7% for Clinton and 44.3% for Trump.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in Maine sees Clinton at 54.9% of the two-party vote. Compared to her numbers in the MPRC (D) poll Clinton's poll average is 0.9 percentage points lower. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The current PollyVote forecasts Clinton to gain 55.6% of the two-party vote in Maine. That is, the PollyVote is 0.1 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's margin of error.