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2018 House · VA-7

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2018-11-01 (5 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 43.98% · Republican 45.79%

R+1.8

The certified result

Democrat 50.34% · Republican 48.40%

D+1.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 43.98 − 45.79 = -1.81
  2. Actual margin = 50.337 − 48.397 = 1.940
  3. Signed miss = -1.81 − (1.940) = -3.749
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.749| = 3.749

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 56623, race ID 574 (538 database).