Skip to content

2016 President · VA

Roanoke College Institute for Policy and Opinion Research · fieldwork ended 2016-10-27 (12 days before the election) · 766 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 32%

D+18.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.73% · Republican 44.41%

D+5.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 32 = 18.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.728 − 44.407 = 5.321
  3. Signed miss = 18.00 − (5.321) = 12.679
  4. Absolute miss = |12.679| = 12.679

The poll overstated the Democrat by 12.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48358, race ID 647 (538 database).