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2014 Senate · AR

Opinion Research Associates · fieldwork ended 2014-10-31 (4 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 43%

D+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 39.43% · Republican 56.50%

R+17.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 43 = 2.00
  2. Actual margin = 39.430 − 56.497 = -17.067
  3. Signed miss = 2.00 − (-17.067) = 19.067
  4. Absolute miss = |19.067| = 19.067

The poll overstated the Democrat by 19.1 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 62482, race ID 32 (538 database).