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2016 President · national

Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research · fieldwork ended 2016-11-02 (6 days before the election) · 1,107 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 43%

D+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.00% · Republican 45.81%

D+2.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 43 = 2.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.997 − 45.815 = 2.182
  3. Signed miss = 2.00 − (2.182) = -0.181
  4. Absolute miss = |-0.181| = 0.181

The poll overstated the Republican by 0.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48361, race ID 94 (538 database).