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2006 Governor · MA

Suffolk University · fieldwork ended 2006-10-22 (16 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 53% · Republican 26%

D+27.0

The certified result

Democrat 55.63% · Republican 35.33%

D+20.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 53 − 26 = 27.00
  2. Actual margin = 55.635 − 35.334 = 20.301
  3. Signed miss = 27.00 − (20.301) = 6.699
  4. Absolute miss = |6.699| = 6.699

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24801, race ID 1341 (538 database).