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2014 Governor · MD

WPA Intelligence · fieldwork ended 2014-10-19 (16 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 41%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.25% · Republican 51.03%

R+3.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 41 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.248 − 51.028 = -3.780
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-3.780) = 4.780
  4. Absolute miss = |4.780| = 4.780

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.8 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 34224, race ID 1241 (538 database).