Skip to content

2014 Senate · NC

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2014-10-20 (15 days before the election) · 1,910 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 41%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.26% · Republican 48.82%

R+1.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 41 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.256 − 48.821 = -1.565
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (-1.565) = 4.564
  4. Absolute miss = |4.564| = 4.564

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.6 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 33795, race ID 14 (538 database).