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2016 President · VA

Christopher Newport University Wason Center for Civic Leadership · fieldwork ended 2016-10-18 (21 days before the election) · 834 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 33%

D+12.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.73% · Republican 44.41%

D+5.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 33 = 12.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.728 − 44.407 = 5.321
  3. Signed miss = 12.00 − (5.321) = 6.679
  4. Absolute miss = |6.679| = 6.679

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47154, race ID 647 (538 database).