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2016 President · national

CBS News/The New York Times · fieldwork ended 2016-10-30 (9 days before the election) · 927 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 42%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.00% · Republican 45.81%

D+2.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 42 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.997 − 45.815 = 2.182
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (2.182) = 0.819
  4. Absolute miss = |0.819| = 0.819

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48180, race ID 94 (538 database).