ABC/Post poll: Trump behind by 4 points
By Results of a new national poll carried out by ABC/Post were published. The poll asked participants for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
ABC/Post poll results
Of those who replied, 49.0% said that they are going to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 45.0% revealed that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was carried out via phone from November 2 to November 5 among 1937 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-2.3 points. This means that the levels of voter support for the Republican and the Democratic candidate do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they often incorporate large errors. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we translate the candidates' raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 52.1% for Clinton and 47.9% for Trump. On November 4 Clinton received 52.7% in the ABC/Post poll and Trump received only 47.3%.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls sees Clinton at 51.8% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.3 percentage points lower than her respective numbers in the ABC/Post poll. This difference is within the poll's sampling error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote forecast
The latest PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 52.5% of the two-party vote. Hence, the combined PollyVote is 0.4 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is thus within the poll's sampling error.
