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2002 Senate · NH

Franklin Pierce University Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication · fieldwork ended 2002-10-29 (7 days before the election) · 933 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 40%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.40% · Republican 50.82%

R+4.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 40 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.402 − 50.819 = -4.417
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (-4.417) = 9.417
  4. Absolute miss = |9.417| = 9.417

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25468, race ID 1669 (538 database).