Latest Emerson poll in New Hampshire: Trump and Clinton neck-and-neck
Results of a new poll conducted by Emerson were published. The poll asked respondents from New Hampshire for whom they will vote: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
In New Hampshire, the popular vote is often close. Therefore, the state is commonly regarded as a swing state, which makes it particularly interesting from a forecasting perspective.
Emerson poll results
Of those who replied, 45.0% said that they plan to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whereas 44.0% revealed that they would give their vote to businessman Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from November 4 to November 5. A total of 1000 likely voters responded. The error margin is +/-3.0 percentage points, which means that the levels of voter support for both parties' candidates do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. In general, one should not have too much confidence in the results of a single poll. Instead of relying on results from single polls, you should look at combined polls or, even better, a combined forecast that incorporates forecasts from different methods, each of which draws upon different data.
In order to make the results comparable to forecasts from other methods, one can translate them into shares of the two-party vote. This procedure yields figures of 50.6% for Clinton and 49.4% for Trump. For comparison: 51.7% was obtained by Clinton in the Emerson poll on October 25, for Trump this result was only 48.3%.
Comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls in New Hampshire sees Clinton at 50.2% of the two-party vote. This value is 0.4 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the Emerson poll. This difference is within the poll's error margin, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The most recent PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 53.0% of the two-party vote in New Hampshire. Hence, the PollyVote is 2.4 points above her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's margin of error.