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2002 House · PA-13

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 2002-10-27 (9 days before the election) · 300 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 43% · Republican 35%

D+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.95% · Republican 47.34%

D+3.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 43 − 35 = 8.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.949 − 47.339 = 3.610
  3. Signed miss = 8.00 − (3.610) = 4.389
  4. Absolute miss = |4.389| = 4.389

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64172, race ID 3060 (538 database).