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2017 Senate · AL

The Washington Post/George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government · fieldwork ended 2017-11-29 (13 days before the election) · 739 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 47%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.97% · Republican 48.34%

D+1.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 47 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.966 − 48.340 = 1.626
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (1.626) = 1.374
  4. Absolute miss = |1.374| = 1.374

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 50681, race ID 95 (538 database).