Skip to content

2016 President · PA

Quinnipiac University · fieldwork ended 2016-10-29 (10 days before the election) · 612 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 43%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.47% · Republican 48.18%

R+0.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 43 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.465 − 48.183 = -0.718
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (-0.718) = 5.718
  4. Absolute miss = |5.718| = 5.718

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48101, race ID 640 (538 database).