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2016 House · NY-19

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2016-10-29 (10 days before the election) · 598 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 42%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 40.95% · Republican 44.18%

R+3.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 42 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 40.946 − 44.180 = -3.234
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (-3.234) = 6.234
  4. Absolute miss = |6.234| = 6.234

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 49209, race ID 6046 (538 database).