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2012 Senate · MA

Suffolk University · fieldwork ended 2012-10-27 (10 days before the election) · 600 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 53% · Republican 46%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 53.27% · Republican 45.79%

D+7.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 53 − 46 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.274 − 45.790 = 7.484
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (7.484) = -0.484
  4. Absolute miss = |-0.484| = 0.484

The poll overstated the Republican by 0.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30445, race ID 1482 (538 database).