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2016 Senate · ID

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 447 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 34% · Republican 61%

R+27.0

The certified result

Democrat 27.73% · Republican 66.14%

R+38.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 34 − 61 = -27.00
  2. Actual margin = 27.727 − 66.135 = -38.408
  3. Signed miss = -27.00 − (-38.408) = 11.408
  4. Absolute miss = |11.408| = 11.408

The poll overstated the Democrat by 11.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47895, race ID 80 (538 database).