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1998 Senate · CA

Harris Insights & Analytics · fieldwork ended 1998-10-20 (14 days before the election) · 4,531 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 45%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 53.06% · Republican 43.01%

D+10.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 45 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.057 − 43.012 = 10.045
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (10.045) = -9.046
  4. Absolute miss = |-9.046| = 9.046

The poll overstated the Republican by 9.0 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 54215, race ID 1721 (538 database).