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2004 President · NH

Suffolk University · fieldwork ended 2004-10-16 (17 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 41%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.24% · Republican 48.87%

D+1.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 41 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.242 − 48.874 = 1.368
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (1.368) = 3.632
  4. Absolute miss = |3.632| = 3.632

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4675, race ID 785 (538 database).