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2017 Senate · AL

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2017-12-06 (6 days before the election) · 2,131 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 46%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.97% · Republican 48.34%

D+1.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 46 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.966 − 48.340 = 1.626
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (1.626) = 3.374
  4. Absolute miss = |3.374| = 3.374

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 50684, race ID 95 (538 database).