Skip to content

2014 Senate · SD

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2014-10-20 (15 days before the election) · 527 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 25% · Republican 38%

R+13.0

The certified result

Democrat 29.51% · Republican 50.37%

R+20.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 25 − 38 = -13.00
  2. Actual margin = 29.511 − 50.370 = -20.859
  3. Signed miss = -13.00 − (-20.859) = 7.860
  4. Absolute miss = |7.860| = 7.860

The poll overstated the Democrat by 7.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 33814, race ID 22 (538 database).