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2016 Senate · PA

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-11-04 (4 days before the election) · 2,845 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 49% · Republican 45%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.34% · Republican 48.77%

R+1.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 49 − 45 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.341 − 48.774 = -1.433
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (-1.433) = 5.432
  4. Absolute miss = |5.432| = 5.432

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48898, race ID 86 (538 database).