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2016 President · IA

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 984 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 45%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 41.75% · Republican 51.16%

R+9.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 45 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 41.753 − 51.162 = -9.409
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-9.409) = 4.410
  4. Absolute miss = |4.410| = 4.410

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47898, race ID 614 (538 database).