Skip to content

2004 Senate · OH

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2004-10-27 (6 days before the election) · 1,500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 26% · Republican 64%

R+38.0

The certified result

Democrat 36.15% · Republican 63.85%

R+27.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 26 − 64 = -38.00
  2. Actual margin = 36.145 − 63.849 = -27.704
  3. Signed miss = -38.00 − (-27.704) = -10.296
  4. Absolute miss = |-10.296| = 10.296

The poll overstated the Republican by 10.3 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25188, race ID 1638 (538 database).