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2016 Senate · PA

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2016-10-24 (15 days before the election) · 824 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 44%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.34% · Republican 48.77%

R+1.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 44 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.341 − 48.774 = -1.433
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (-1.433) = 4.432
  4. Absolute miss = |4.432| = 4.432

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47551, race ID 86 (538 database).