Since July 28, when Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination, she has gained five points in the USC Dornsife/LA Times Daybreak tracking poll of the election. …
Typically, polls ask people which candidate they favor or lean toward. Those who say they don’t know or are undecided don’t get factored into calculations of candidate support.
The Daybreak poll, by contrast, asks voters, using a 0-to-100 scale, to rate their chances of voting for Clinton, for Trump or for some other candidate. As a result, everyone who responds to the survey has some impact on the results. Because that approach gathers information from everyone in the poll sample, it should give a better read on the many voters who remain ambivalent about their choices.
Using the 0-to-100 scale, however, almost certainly makes the Daybreak poll differ somewhat from other surveys. CONT.
David Lauter, Los Angeles Times