Skip to content

2014 House · IL-13

We Ask America · fieldwork ended 2014-10-21 (14 days before the election) · 442 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 36% · Republican 53%

R+17.0

The certified result

Democrat 41.34% · Republican 58.66%

R+17.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 36 − 53 = -17.00
  2. Actual margin = 41.344 − 58.656 = -17.312
  3. Signed miss = -17.00 − (-17.312) = 0.312
  4. Absolute miss = |0.312| = 0.312

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.3 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 36080, race ID 5476 (538 database).