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2016 Senate · WI

Marquette University Law School · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 1,255 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 44%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.81% · Republican 50.17%

R+3.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 44 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.811 − 50.173 = -3.362
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-3.362) = 4.362
  4. Absolute miss = |4.362| = 4.362

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48095, race ID 71 (538 database).