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2014 Senate · ME

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2014-10-20 (15 days before the election) · 1,177 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 35% · Republican 54%

R+19.0

The certified result

Democrat 31.50% · Republican 68.46%

R+37.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 35 − 54 = -19.00
  2. Actual margin = 31.498 − 68.458 = -36.960
  3. Signed miss = -19.00 − (-36.960) = 17.960
  4. Absolute miss = |17.960| = 17.960

The poll overstated the Democrat by 18.0 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 33796, race ID 9 (538 database).