Skip to content

2012 Senate · MO

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2012-10-17 (20 days before the election) · 500 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 43%

D+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 54.81% · Republican 39.11%

D+15.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 43 = 8.00
  2. Actual margin = 54.814 − 39.114 = 15.700
  3. Signed miss = 8.00 − (15.700) = -7.701
  4. Absolute miss = |-7.701| = 7.701

The poll overstated the Republican by 7.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30126, race ID 1486 (538 database).