New Bloomberg/Selzer poll: Clinton and Trump in a dead heat
By Results of a new national poll administered by Bloomberg/Selzer were announced. The poll asked respondents for whom they will vote: Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Bloomberg/Selzer poll results
Of those who replied, 46.0% said that they will vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, while 43.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The phone poll was carried out from November 4 to November 6 with 799 likely voters. The error margin is +/-3.5 points. This means that the poll results for the candidates of both parties do not differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As a general rule, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, because 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 benchmark forecasts, one can convert them into shares of the two-party vote. The respective figures are 51.7% for Clinton and 48.3% for Trump. For comparison: 55.0% was gained by Clinton in the Bloomberg/Selzer poll on October 17, for Trump this number was only 45.1%.
Results in comparison to other polls
An average of recent polls sees Clinton at 51.9% of the two-party vote. Compared to her numbers in the Bloomberg/Selzer poll Clinton's poll average is 0.2 percentage points higher. This deviation is within the poll's sampling error, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
Results compared to the combined PollyVote prediction
The most recent PollyVote predicts Clinton to gain 52.5% of the two-party vote. That is, the PollyVote is 0.8 points above her polling numbers. Again, a look at the poll's margin of error suggests that this difference is insignificant.
