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2016 Senate · SC

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 1,762 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 39% · Republican 56%

R+17.0

The certified result

Democrat 34.37% · Republican 60.57%

R+26.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 39 − 56 = -17.00
  2. Actual margin = 34.370 − 60.569 = -26.199
  3. Signed miss = -17.00 − (-26.199) = 9.200
  4. Absolute miss = |9.200| = 9.200

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47923, race ID 66 (538 database).