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2002 Senate · TN

Mellman Group · fieldwork ended 2002-10-19 (17 days before the election) · 600 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 50%

R+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.34% · Republican 54.28%

R+9.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 50 = -6.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.339 − 54.279 = -9.940
  3. Signed miss = -6.00 − (-9.940) = 3.941
  4. Absolute miss = |3.941| = 3.941

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25547, race ID 1678 (538 database).