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2016 Senate · AL

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

The poll said

Democrat 36% · Republican 60%

R+24.0

The certified result

Democrat 35.87% · Republican 63.96%

R+28.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 36 − 60 = -24.00
  2. Actual margin = 35.867 − 63.959 = -28.092
  3. Signed miss = -24.00 − (-28.092) = 4.092
  4. Absolute miss = |4.092| = 4.092

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.1 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47883, race ID 68 (538 database).