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2010 Senate · MA

Suffolk University · fieldwork ended 2010-01-12 (7 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 50%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.09% · Republican 51.86%

R+4.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 50 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.095 − 51.860 = -4.765
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-4.765) = 0.764
  4. Absolute miss = |0.764| = 0.764

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 63811, race ID 1526 (538 database).