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2018 Senate · PA

Franklin & Marshall College Center for Opinion Research · fieldwork ended 2018-10-25 (12 days before the election) · 214 respondents · Mail-to-Web/Mail-to-Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 35%

D+15.0

The certified result

Democrat 55.74% · Republican 42.62%

D+13.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 35 = 15.00
  2. Actual margin = 55.744 − 42.617 = 13.127
  3. Signed miss = 15.00 − (13.127) = 1.873
  4. Absolute miss = |1.873| = 1.873

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 56628, race ID 118 (538 database).