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2012 House · MT-1

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2012-11-02 (4 days before the election) · 836 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 48%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.72% · Republican 53.25%

R+10.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 48 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.719 − 53.251 = -10.532
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-10.532) = 6.533
  4. Absolute miss = |6.533| = 6.533

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30681, race ID 5129 (538 database).