Skip to content

2016 President · national

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-20 (19 days before the election) · 32,225 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 41%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.00% · Republican 45.81%

D+2.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 41 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.997 − 45.815 = 2.182
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (2.182) = 2.819
  4. Absolute miss = |2.819| = 2.819

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47324, race ID 94 (538 database).