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2016 Senate · NC

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 1,574 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 43%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 45.37% · Republican 51.06%

R+5.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 43 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 45.366 − 51.062 = -5.696
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (-5.696) = 9.696
  4. Absolute miss = |9.696| = 9.696

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47916, race ID 62 (538 database).