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2004 President · NJ

Fairleigh Dickinson University · fieldwork ended 2004-10-25 (8 days before the election) · 549 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 40%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 52.92% · Republican 46.24%

D+6.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 40 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 52.923 − 46.239 = 6.684
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (6.684) = 0.315
  4. Absolute miss = |0.315| = 0.315

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 4551, race ID 786 (538 database).