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2014 Senate · AR

Opinion Research Associates · fieldwork ended 2014-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 401 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 44%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 39.43% · Republican 56.50%

R+17.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 44 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 39.430 − 56.497 = -17.067
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-17.067) = 18.067
  4. Absolute miss = |18.067| = 18.067

The poll overstated the Democrat by 18.1 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 34044, race ID 32 (538 database).