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2016 Senate · SD

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-11-04 (4 days before the election) · 459 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 31% · Republican 65%

R+34.0

The certified result

Democrat 28.17% · Republican 71.83%

R+43.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 31 − 65 = -34.00
  2. Actual margin = 28.172 − 71.828 = -43.656
  3. Signed miss = -34.00 − (-43.656) = 9.656
  4. Absolute miss = |9.656| = 9.656

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48901, race ID 79 (538 database).