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2000 Senate · VA

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2000-10-24 (14 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 47%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.68% · Republican 52.26%

R+4.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 47 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.680 − 52.255 = -4.575
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (-4.575) = 1.575
  4. Absolute miss = |1.575| = 1.575

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 6377, race ID 1712 (538 database).