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2017 Senate · AL

Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research · fieldwork ended 2017-12-09 (3 days before the election) · 1,127 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 40%

D+10.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.97% · Republican 48.34%

D+1.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 40 = 10.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.966 − 48.340 = 1.626
  3. Signed miss = 10.00 − (1.626) = 8.374
  4. Absolute miss = |8.374| = 8.374

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 50659, race ID 95 (538 database).