On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal published the following takeaway about a new NBC News/WSJ/Marist poll of Latino voters in Nevada:
But the new poll shows that the Latino vote has shifted in Mr. Trump’s direction over the past month. Mrs. Clinton still has a solid lead among Hispanics, 52%-36%, but last month her margin was almost twice as wide, 59%-28%.
The 36% Latino support for Trump contradicts other October swing state polls that show Trump earning 17% support (NALEO/Telemundo) and Univision (20% support for Trump).
Why the contradictions? Part of the reason might have to do with how the NBC News/WSJ/Marist poll continues to undersample Latino voters in Nevada, an issue it had the last time the same poll was conducted.
According to the actual toplines of this current NBC News/WSJ/Marist poll, the Latino sample of likely voters polled comes out to about 120 voters, meaning that from a raw numbers perspective, 62 respondents chose Clinton and 43 respondents chose Trump. The low sample number raises questions as to how accurate the poll’s results are, a general topic observers of Latino polling have commented earlier this year:
Here is how the math breaks down. The first image from the poll’s findings confirm that 707 likely voters were surveyed for the results:
Of those 707 likely voters, 17% were Latino (annotated in red), which comes out to 120 voters.
The sample of 120 voters was then broken down by percentage for candidate preferences across four candidates:
Based on those percentages, 62 voters chose Clinton, 43 voters chose Trump and 13 voters chose Gary Johnson.
Other Latino swing state polls for Nevada have had larger samples and were polls that were just focused on Latino voters. For instance, both the NALEO/Telemundo poll and the Univision swing state poll interviewed 400 registered Latino Nevada voters.