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2017 Governor · VA

Øptimus Analytics · fieldwork ended 2017-11-01 (6 days before the election) · 1,600 respondents · IVR · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 37.4% · Republican 40.4%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 53.89% · Republican 44.98%

D+8.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 37.4 − 40.4 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.894 − 44.977 = 8.917
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (8.917) = -11.917
  4. Absolute miss = |-11.917| = 11.917

The poll overstated the Republican by 11.9 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 50524, race ID 1214 (538 database).