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2006 Senate · VA

Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group · fieldwork ended 2006-10-28 (10 days before the election) · 811 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 43%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.59% · Republican 49.20%

D+0.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 43 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.594 − 49.201 = 0.393
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (0.393) = 3.606
  4. Absolute miss = |3.606| = 3.606

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24290, race ID 1609 (538 database).