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2016 President · OH

Suffolk University · fieldwork ended 2016-10-18 (21 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 45%

even

The certified result

Democrat 43.56% · Republican 51.69%

R+8.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 45 = 0.00
  2. Actual margin = 43.558 − 51.688 = -8.130
  3. Signed miss = 0.00 − (-8.130) = 8.130
  4. Absolute miss = |8.130| = 8.130

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.1 points and showed a tie.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47094, race ID 637 (538 database).