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2004 Governor · MT

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

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 43%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.44% · Republican 46.02%

D+4.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 43 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.436 − 46.019 = 4.417
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (4.417) = 0.584
  4. Absolute miss = |0.584| = 0.584

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4596, race ID 1368 (538 database).