Skip to content

2010 Senate · CA

WPA Intelligence · fieldwork ended 2010-10-13 (20 days before the election) · 800 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 43% · Republican 46%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 52.18% · Republican 42.17%

D+10.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 43 − 46 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 52.184 − 42.173 = 10.011
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (10.011) = -13.011
  4. Absolute miss = |-13.011| = 13.011

The poll overstated the Republican by 13.0 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 32594, race ID 1510 (538 database).