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2006 Senate · VA

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2006-11-02 (5 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 45%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.59% · Republican 49.20%

D+0.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 45 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.594 − 49.201 = 0.393
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (0.393) = 0.606
  4. Absolute miss = |0.606| = 0.606

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24367, race ID 1609 (538 database).