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2016 President · MA

Suffolk University · fieldwork ended 2016-10-25 (14 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 57% · Republican 25%

D+32.0

The certified result

Democrat 60.01% · Republican 32.81%

D+27.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 57 − 25 = 32.00
  2. Actual margin = 60.005 − 32.808 = 27.197
  3. Signed miss = 32.00 − (27.197) = 4.803
  4. Absolute miss = |4.803| = 4.803

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47614, race ID 621 (538 database).