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2004 House · IL-8

GQR · fieldwork ended 2004-10-26 (7 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 48%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.70% · Republican 48.30%

D+3.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 48 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.700 − 48.300 = 3.400
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (3.400) = -5.399
  4. Absolute miss = |-5.399| = 5.399

The poll overstated the Republican by 5.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64064, race ID 3288 (538 database).