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2012 President · MO

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2012-10-20 (17 days before the election) · 582 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 52%

R+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.38% · Republican 53.76%

R+9.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 52 = -6.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.383 − 53.764 = -9.381
  3. Signed miss = -6.00 − (-9.381) = 3.380
  4. Absolute miss = |3.380| = 3.380

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30186, race ID 677 (538 database).