Skip to content

2012 Senate · WI

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2012-10-16 (21 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 45%

D+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.41% · Republican 45.86%

D+5.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 45 = 2.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.409 − 45.860 = 5.549
  3. Signed miss = 2.00 − (5.549) = -3.549
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.549| = 3.549

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30276, race ID 1504 (538 database).