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2016 Senate · PA

Franklin & Marshall College Center for Opinion Research · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 652 respondents · Mail-to-Web/Mail-to-Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 35%

D+12.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.34% · Republican 48.77%

R+1.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 35 = 12.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.341 − 48.774 = -1.433
  3. Signed miss = 12.00 − (-1.433) = 13.432
  4. Absolute miss = |13.432| = 13.432

The poll overstated the Democrat by 13.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47876, race ID 86 (538 database).