Skip to content

2002 Senate · NH

GQR · fieldwork ended 2002-10-15 (21 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 43%

D+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.40% · Republican 50.82%

R+4.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 43 = 2.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.402 − 50.819 = -4.417
  3. Signed miss = 2.00 − (-4.417) = 6.417
  4. Absolute miss = |6.417| = 6.417

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25485, race ID 1669 (538 database).