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1998 Governor · CA

Field Research Corp. (Field Poll) · fieldwork ended 1998-10-17 (17 days before the election) · 809 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 43%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 57.97% · Republican 38.38%

D+19.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 43 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 57.968 − 38.377 = 19.591
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (19.591) = -12.591
  4. Absolute miss = |-12.591| = 12.591

The poll overstated the Republican by 12.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 54213, race ID 1436 (538 database).