Latest Bloomberg poll: Clinton and Trump in a tossup
By Bloomberg published the results of a new national poll. In this poll, participants were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Bloomberg poll results
Of those who responded, 46.0% said that they would vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 43.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from November 4 to November 6. A total of 799 participants responded. There is a sampling error of +/-3.5 percentage points. Considering this error margin, the race is currently a statistical tie.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, you should not have too much faith in the results of single polls, as they often incorporate large errors. At least, one should check how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
To make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, you can convert them into two-party vote shares. This yields figures of 51.7% for Clinton and 48.3% for Trump. To compare: 55.0% was gained by Clinton in the Bloomberg poll on October 17, for Trump this result was only 45.1%.
Results compared to other polls
Clinton is currently at 51.9% of the major two-party vote in an average of recent polls. This value is 0.2 percentage points higher than her respective numbers in the Bloomberg poll. This deviation is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The latest PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 52.5% of the two-party vote. Hence, the PollyVote forecast is 0.8 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's margin of error.
