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2010 Governor · MA

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 2010-10-12 (21 days before the election) · 800 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 35% · Republican 42%

R+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.42% · Republican 42.01%

D+6.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 35 − 42 = -7.00
  2. Actual margin = 48.422 − 42.005 = 6.417
  3. Signed miss = -7.00 − (6.417) = -13.418
  4. Absolute miss = |-13.418| = 13.418

The poll overstated the Republican by 13.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 53028, race ID 1294 (538 database).