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2016 Senate · WI

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2016-11-04 (4 days before the election) · 2,246 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 49%

R+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.81% · Republican 50.17%

R+3.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 49 = -1.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.811 − 50.173 = -3.362
  3. Signed miss = -1.00 − (-3.362) = 2.362
  4. Absolute miss = |2.362| = 2.362

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48909, race ID 71 (538 database).