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2004 Senate · SC

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2004-10-19 (14 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 43% · Republican 47%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.10% · Republican 53.67%

R+9.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 43 − 47 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.101 − 53.666 = -9.565
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-9.565) = 5.566
  4. Absolute miss = |5.566| = 5.566

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4583, race ID 1642 (538 database).