2002 Senate · TX
FM3 Research · fieldwork ended 2002-10-15 (21 days before the election) · 679 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)
The poll said
Democrat 42% · Republican 40%
D+2.0
The certified result
Democrat 43.33% · Republican 55.30%
R+12.0
The arithmetic
- Poll margin = 42 − 40 = 2.00
- Actual margin = 43.326 − 55.300 = -11.974
- Signed miss = 2.00 − (-11.974) = 13.973
- Absolute miss = |13.973| = 13.973
The poll overstated the Democrat by 14.0 points and had the wrong leader.
Where these numbers come from
Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72955, race ID 1679 (538 database).