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2016 Senate · MD

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

The poll said

Democrat 64% · Republican 33%

D+31.0

The certified result

Democrat 60.89% · Republican 35.67%

D+25.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 64 − 33 = 31.00
  2. Actual margin = 60.888 − 35.675 = 25.213
  3. Signed miss = 31.00 − (25.213) = 5.787
  4. Absolute miss = |5.787| = 5.787

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48880, race ID 82 (538 database).