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2016 President · national

Rasmussen Reports · fieldwork ended 2016-10-18 (21 days before the election) · 1,500 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 43%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.00% · Republican 45.81%

D+2.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 43 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.997 − 45.815 = 2.182
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (2.182) = -5.181
  4. Absolute miss = |-5.181| = 5.181

The poll overstated the Republican by 5.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47091, race ID 94 (538 database).