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2010 Senate · NC

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2010-10-16 (17 days before the election) · 597 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 48%

R+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 43.05% · Republican 54.81%

R+11.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 48 = -8.00
  2. Actual margin = 43.047 − 54.812 = -11.765
  3. Signed miss = -8.00 − (-11.765) = 3.766
  4. Absolute miss = |3.766| = 3.766

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 32590, race ID 1532 (538 database).