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2014 Senate · GA

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2014-10-19 (16 days before the election) · 606 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 44%

D+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 45.21% · Republican 52.89%

R+7.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 44 = 2.00
  2. Actual margin = 45.206 − 52.889 = -7.683
  3. Signed miss = 2.00 − (-7.683) = 9.683
  4. Absolute miss = |9.683| = 9.683

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 33781, race ID 17 (538 database).