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2014 Senate · MA

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2014-10-24 (11 days before the election) · 591 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 53% · Republican 37%

D+16.0

The certified result

Democrat 61.87% · Republican 37.98%

D+23.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 53 − 37 = 16.00
  2. Actual margin = 61.869 − 37.984 = 23.885
  3. Signed miss = 16.00 − (23.885) = -7.885
  4. Absolute miss = |-7.885| = 7.885

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

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 34376, race ID 31 (538 database).