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2017 Governor · VA

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2017-11-03 (4 days before the election) · 3,648 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 52% · Republican 46%

D+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 53.89% · Republican 44.98%

D+8.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 52 − 46 = 6.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.894 − 44.977 = 8.917
  3. Signed miss = 6.00 − (8.917) = -2.917
  4. Absolute miss = |-2.917| = 2.917

The poll overstated the Republican by 2.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 50530, race ID 1214 (538 database).