Skip to content

2010 Senate · MA

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2010-01-04 (15 days before the election) · 500 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 41%

D+9.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.09% · Republican 51.86%

R+4.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 41 = 9.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.095 − 51.860 = -4.765
  3. Signed miss = 9.00 − (-4.765) = 13.764
  4. Absolute miss = |13.764| = 13.764

The poll overstated the Democrat by 13.8 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 63720, race ID 1526 (538 database).