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2016 Senate · NC

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2016-10-22 (17 days before the election) · 792 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 46%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 45.37% · Republican 51.06%

R+5.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 46 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 45.366 − 51.062 = -5.696
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-5.696) = 6.696
  4. Absolute miss = |6.696| = 6.696

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

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47325, race ID 62 (538 database).