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2016 Senate · MO

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-11-04 (4 days before the election) · 1,368 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 44%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.39% · Republican 49.18%

R+2.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 44 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.392 − 49.184 = -2.792
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (-2.792) = 9.792
  4. Absolute miss = |9.792| = 9.792

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.8 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48885, race ID 70 (538 database).