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2012 President · CO

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2012-10-21 (16 days before the election) · 500 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 50%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.49% · Republican 46.13%

D+5.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 50 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.492 − 46.127 = 5.365
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (5.365) = -9.365
  4. Absolute miss = |-9.365| = 9.365

The poll overstated the Republican by 9.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30201, race ID 658 (538 database).