Skip to content

2012 Governor · MT

Mellman Group · fieldwork ended 2012-10-30 (7 days before the election) · 800 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 40%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.91% · Republican 47.34%

D+1.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 40 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 48.905 − 47.339 = 1.566
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (1.566) = 5.434
  4. Absolute miss = |5.434| = 5.434

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 73522, race ID 1258 (538 database).