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2012 President · MA

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2012-10-25 (12 days before the election) · 500 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 59% · Republican 40%

D+19.0

The certified result

Democrat 60.34% · Republican 37.32%

D+23.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 59 − 40 = 19.00
  2. Actual margin = 60.338 − 37.319 = 23.019
  3. Signed miss = 19.00 − (23.019) = -4.019
  4. Absolute miss = |-4.019| = 4.019

The poll overstated the Republican by 4.0 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30328, race ID 672 (538 database).