Skip to content

2006 Senate · CA

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2006-11-03 (4 days before the election) · 553 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 60% · Republican 31%

D+29.0

The certified result

Democrat 59.43% · Republican 35.02%

D+24.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 60 − 31 = 29.00
  2. Actual margin = 59.431 − 35.015 = 24.416
  3. Signed miss = 29.00 − (24.416) = 4.584
  4. Absolute miss = |4.584| = 4.584

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 24808, race ID 1582 (538 database).