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2012 Senate · PA

Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group · fieldwork ended 2012-10-16 (21 days before the election) · 604 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 52% · Republican 39%

D+13.0

The certified result

Democrat 53.69% · Republican 44.59%

D+9.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 52 − 39 = 13.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.690 − 44.588 = 9.102
  3. Signed miss = 13.00 − (9.102) = 3.898
  4. Absolute miss = |3.898| = 3.898

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 30132, race ID 1495 (538 database).