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2002 Senate · NC

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2002-10-28 (8 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 48%

R+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.95% · Republican 53.56%

R+8.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 48 = -6.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.955 − 53.564 = -8.609
  3. Signed miss = -6.00 − (-8.609) = 2.609
  4. Absolute miss = |2.609| = 2.609

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25529, race ID 1672 (538 database).