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2016 President · SD

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-11-04 (4 days before the election) · 459 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 32% · Republican 53%

R+21.0

The certified result

Democrat 31.74% · Republican 61.53%

R+29.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 32 − 53 = -21.00
  2. Actual margin = 31.737 − 61.531 = -29.794
  3. Signed miss = -21.00 − (-29.794) = 8.793
  4. Absolute miss = |8.793| = 8.793

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48901, race ID 643 (538 database).