Skip to content

2016 President · OH

Columbus Dispatch · fieldwork ended 2016-10-31 (8 days before the election) · 1,151 respondents · Mail

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 47%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 43.56% · Republican 51.69%

R+8.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 47 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 43.558 − 51.688 = -8.130
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-8.130) = 9.130
  4. Absolute miss = |9.130| = 9.130

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.1 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48479, race ID 637 (538 database).