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2016 Senate · MD

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 740 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 66% · Republican 31%

D+35.0

The certified result

Democrat 60.89% · Republican 35.67%

D+25.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 66 − 31 = 35.00
  2. Actual margin = 60.888 − 35.675 = 25.213
  3. Signed miss = 35.00 − (25.213) = 9.787
  4. Absolute miss = |9.787| = 9.787

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47903, race ID 82 (538 database).