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2016 Senate · KY

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 424 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 52%

R+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.73% · Republican 57.27%

R+14.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 52 = -6.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.725 − 57.273 = -14.548
  3. Signed miss = -6.00 − (-14.548) = 8.549
  4. Absolute miss = |8.549| = 8.549

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47900, race ID 81 (538 database).