Skip to content

2004 Senate · AK

Global Strategy Group · fieldwork ended 2004-10-18 (15 days before the election) · 600 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 43%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 45.55% · Republican 48.58%

R+3.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 43 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 45.546 − 48.578 = -3.032
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (-3.032) = 7.032
  4. Absolute miss = |7.032| = 7.032

The poll overstated the Democrat by 7.0 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25131, race ID 1615 (538 database).