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2012 President · FL

Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research · fieldwork ended 2012-10-17 (20 days before the election) · 1,130 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 48%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.01% · Republican 49.13%

D+0.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 48 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.008 − 49.131 = 0.877
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (0.877) = -3.877
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.877| = 3.877

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.9 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30144, race ID 662 (538 database).