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1998 Senate · NC

Harris Insights & Analytics · fieldwork ended 1998-10-20 (14 days before the election) · 1,163 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 38%

D+9.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.15% · Republican 47.01%

D+4.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 38 = 9.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.151 − 47.012 = 4.139
  3. Signed miss = 9.00 − (4.139) = 4.860
  4. Absolute miss = |4.860| = 4.860

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 63648, race ID 1739 (538 database).