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2016 Senate · WI

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2016-10-18 (21 days before the election) · 804 respondents · IVR · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 41%

D+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.81% · Republican 50.17%

R+3.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 41 = 6.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.811 − 50.173 = -3.362
  3. Signed miss = 6.00 − (-3.362) = 9.362
  4. Absolute miss = |9.362| = 9.362

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47087, race ID 71 (538 database).