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2016 President · VA

The Washington Post/George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government · fieldwork ended 2016-10-29 (10 days before the election) · 1,024 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 42%

D+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.73% · Republican 44.41%

D+5.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 42 = 6.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.728 − 44.407 = 5.321
  3. Signed miss = 6.00 − (5.321) = 0.679
  4. Absolute miss = |0.679| = 0.679

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47880, race ID 647 (538 database).