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2018 House · SD-1

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2018-10-20 (17 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 31% · Republican 54%

R+23.0

The certified result

Democrat 36.02% · Republican 60.33%

R+24.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 31 − 54 = -23.00
  2. Actual margin = 36.025 − 60.332 = -24.307
  3. Signed miss = -23.00 − (-24.307) = 1.307
  4. Absolute miss = |1.307| = 1.307

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.3 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 56431, race ID 518 (538 database).