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1998 Senate · NY

CBS News/The New York Times · fieldwork ended 1998-10-23 (11 days before the election) · 1,235 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 44%

even

The certified result

Democrat 47.82% · Republican 33.67%

D+14.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 44 = 0.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.823 − 33.672 = 14.151
  3. Signed miss = 0.00 − (14.151) = -14.151
  4. Absolute miss = |-14.151| = 14.151

The poll overstated the Republican by 14.2 points and showed a tie.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 26240, race ID 1738 (538 database).