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2016 President · NC

Elon University · fieldwork ended 2016-10-25 (14 days before the election) · 710 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 41.2%

D+0.8

The certified result

Democrat 46.17% · Republican 49.83%

R+3.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 41.2 = 0.80
  2. Actual margin = 46.173 − 49.828 = -3.655
  3. Signed miss = 0.80 − (-3.655) = 4.455
  4. Absolute miss = |4.455| = 4.455

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.5 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47937, race ID 629 (538 database).