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2016 Senate · IL

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 1,003 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 57% · Republican 38%

D+19.0

The certified result

Democrat 54.86% · Republican 39.78%

D+15.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 57 − 38 = 19.00
  2. Actual margin = 54.862 − 39.780 = 15.082
  3. Signed miss = 19.00 − (15.082) = 3.919
  4. Absolute miss = |3.919| = 3.919

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47896, race ID 84 (538 database).