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2012 President · MN

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2012-10-24 (13 days before the election) · 800 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 44%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 52.65% · Republican 44.96%

D+7.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 44 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 52.652 − 44.958 = 7.694
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (7.694) = -4.694
  4. Absolute miss = |-4.694| = 4.694

The poll overstated the Republican by 4.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30384, race ID 676 (538 database).