Skip to content

2016 Senate · PA

Rasmussen Reports · fieldwork ended 2016-10-31 (8 days before the election) · 525 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 42%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.34% · Republican 48.77%

R+1.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 42 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.341 − 48.774 = -1.433
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (-1.433) = 5.432
  4. Absolute miss = |5.432| = 5.432

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48112, race ID 86 (538 database).