Skip to content

2016 President · national

Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research · fieldwork ended 2016-11-05 (3 days before the election) · 1,295 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 44%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.00% · Republican 45.81%

D+2.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 44 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.997 − 45.815 = 2.182
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (2.182) = 1.819
  4. Absolute miss = |1.819| = 1.819

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48619, race ID 94 (538 database).