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2010 House · SD-1

PSB Research · fieldwork ended 2010-10-18 (15 days before the election) · 399 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 42%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 45.89% · Republican 48.12%

R+2.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 42 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 45.891 − 48.119 = -2.228
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (-2.228) = 5.227
  4. Absolute miss = |5.227| = 5.227

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 52088, race ID 4818 (538 database).