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2006 Governor · MD

ABC News/The Washington Post · fieldwork ended 2006-10-24 (14 days before the election) · 1,003 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 55% · Republican 45%

D+10.0

The certified result

Democrat 52.69% · Republican 46.16%

D+6.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 55 − 45 = 10.00
  2. Actual margin = 52.691 − 46.159 = 6.532
  3. Signed miss = 10.00 − (6.532) = 3.468
  4. Absolute miss = |3.468| = 3.468

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24875, race ID 1342 (538 database).