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2016 President · MD

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-11-04 (4 days before the election) · 1,216 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 59% · Republican 28%

D+31.0

The certified result

Democrat 60.33% · Republican 33.91%

D+26.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 59 − 28 = 31.00
  2. Actual margin = 60.326 − 33.909 = 26.417
  3. Signed miss = 31.00 − (26.417) = 4.584
  4. Absolute miss = |4.584| = 4.584

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48880, race ID 622 (538 database).