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2016 President · PA

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-10-28 (11 days before the election) · 2,255 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 49% · Republican 41%

D+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.47% · Republican 48.18%

R+0.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 49 − 41 = 8.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.465 − 48.183 = -0.718
  3. Signed miss = 8.00 − (-0.718) = 8.718
  4. Absolute miss = |8.718| = 8.718

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 47921, race ID 640 (538 database).