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2012 Senate · MO

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2012-11-02 (4 days before the election) · 835 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 44%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 54.81% · Republican 39.11%

D+15.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 44 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 54.814 − 39.114 = 15.700
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (15.700) = -11.701
  4. Absolute miss = |-11.701| = 11.701

The poll overstated the Republican by 11.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30683, race ID 1486 (538 database).