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2002 Senate · AR

Opinion Research Associates · fieldwork ended 2002-10-18 (18 days before the election) · 501 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 43%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 53.90% · Republican 46.10%

D+7.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 43 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.896 − 46.104 = 7.792
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (7.792) = -2.791
  4. Absolute miss = |-2.791| = 2.791

The poll overstated the Republican by 2.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25560, race ID 1650 (538 database).