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2006 Senate · PA

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2006-10-20 (18 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 39%

D+12.0

The certified result

Democrat 58.64% · Republican 41.28%

D+17.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 39 = 12.00
  2. Actual margin = 58.637 − 41.283 = 17.354
  3. Signed miss = 12.00 − (17.354) = -5.354
  4. Absolute miss = |-5.354| = 5.354

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

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24358, race ID 1603 (538 database).