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2016 President · AL

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 485 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 35% · Republican 55%

R+20.0

The certified result

Democrat 34.36% · Republican 62.08%

R+27.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 35 − 55 = -20.00
  2. Actual margin = 34.358 − 62.083 = -27.725
  3. Signed miss = -20.00 − (-27.725) = 7.725
  4. Absolute miss = |7.725| = 7.725

The poll overstated the Democrat by 7.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47883, race ID 603 (538 database).