Skip to content

2004 House · WA-5

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2004-10-28 (5 days before the election) · 625 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 38% · Republican 55%

R+17.0

The certified result

Democrat 40.32% · Republican 59.68%

R+19.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 38 − 55 = -17.00
  2. Actual margin = 40.319 − 59.681 = -19.362
  3. Signed miss = -17.00 − (-19.362) = 2.362
  4. Absolute miss = |2.362| = 2.362

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64711, race ID 3573 (538 database).