On November 7, Western NE UniversityWestern NE University released the results of a new poll, in which respondents from Massachusetts were asked for whom they will vote: Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Western NE UniversityWestern NE University poll results
Of those who replied, 56.0% said that they are going to vote for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whereas 26.0% indicated that they would give their vote to billionaire Donald Trump.
The poll was conducted from October 23 to November 2 with 417 likely voters. The sampling error is +/-5.0 percentage points. This means that the poll results for the candidates of both parties differ significantly.
Putting the results in context
As any other method, polls are subject to bias. Hence, one should not have too much faith in the results of an individual poll. Rather, one should examine how a poll's results compare to benchmark forecasts.
For the following comparison, we translate Clinton's and Trump's raw poll numbers into shares of the two-party vote. The resulting figures are 68.3% for Clinton and 31.7% for Trump.
Comparison to other polls
Clinton currently achieves 67.5% of the two-party vote according to an average of recent polls in Massachusetts. This value is 0.8 percentage points lower than her corresponding numbers in the Western NE UniversityWestern NE University poll. This margin is within the poll's error margin, which suggests that the poll is not an outlier.
The poll in comparison with PollyVote's forecast
The current PollyVote foresees Clinton to gain 65.2% of the two-party vote in Massachusetts. This means that Polly's prediction is 3.1 points below her polling numbers. The PollyVote forecast is therefore within the poll's margin of error.