Vermont: Clinton with huge advantage in recent WCAX – Burlington*WCAX* poll
WCAX – BurlingtonWCAX published the results of a new poll on November 5. In this poll, interviewees from Vermont were asked for whom they will vote: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
WCAX - BurlingtonWCAX poll results
Of those who responded, 50.0% said that they are going to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while 22.0% indicated that they would give their vote to real estate developer Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from October 19 to October 22. A total of 603 likely voters responded. The margin of error is +/-4.0 points. This means that the poll results for the two candidates differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
In general, however, don't have too much faith in the results of single polls, because they can incorporate large errors. Instead of relying on results from single polls, the evidence-based approach is to rely on combined polls or, even better, the combined PollyVote forecast that draws upon different methods and data.
For the following comparison, we convert Trump's and Clinton's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. This yields figures of 69.4% for Clinton and 30.6% for Trump.
Results vs. other polls
Clinton currently runs at 68.5% of the major two-party vote in an average of recent polls in Vermont. This value is 0.9 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the WCAX – BurlingtonWCAX poll. This difference is within the poll's margin of error, which means that the poll is not an outlier.
Comparison to the combined PollyVote
The current PollyVote anticipates Clinton to gain 67.5% of the two-party vote in Vermont. That is, the PollyVote is 1.9 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's sampling error.