Skip to content

1998 Governor · SC

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 1998-10-27 (7 days before the election) · 806 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 46%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 53.23% · Republican 45.20%

D+8.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 46 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.234 − 45.205 = 8.029
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (8.029) = -10.029
  4. Absolute miss = |-10.029| = 10.029

The poll overstated the Republican by 10.0 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 26175, race ID 1461 (538 database).