Skip to content

2014 Governor · MD

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2014-10-20 (15 days before the election) · 1,086 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 38%

D+13.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.25% · Republican 51.03%

R+3.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 38 = 13.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.248 − 51.028 = -3.780
  3. Signed miss = 13.00 − (-3.780) = 16.780
  4. Absolute miss = |16.780| = 16.780

The poll overstated the Democrat by 16.8 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 33952, race ID 1241 (538 database).