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2004 Senate · CO

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 2004-10-15 (18 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 45%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.30% · Republican 46.53%

D+4.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 45 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.303 − 46.533 = 4.770
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (4.770) = -9.770
  4. Absolute miss = |-9.770| = 9.770

The poll overstated the Republican by 9.8 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25216, race ID 1619 (538 database).