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2016 President · NC

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2016-10-31 (8 days before the election) · 1,169 respondents · IVR/Online Panel · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 49% · Republican 47%

D+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.17% · Republican 49.83%

R+3.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 49 − 47 = 2.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.173 − 49.828 = -3.655
  3. Signed miss = 2.00 − (-3.655) = 5.655
  4. Absolute miss = |5.655| = 5.655

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 48326, race ID 629 (538 database).