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2000 Senate · VA

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2000-10-30 (8 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 49%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.68% · Republican 52.26%

R+4.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 49 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.680 − 52.255 = -4.575
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-4.575) = -0.425
  4. Absolute miss = |-0.425| = 0.425

The poll overstated the Republican by 0.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 6231, race ID 1712 (538 database).