Skip to content

2002 Senate · TX

FM3 Research · fieldwork ended 2002-10-18 (18 days before the election) · 900 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 41%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 43.33% · Republican 55.30%

R+12.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 41 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 43.326 − 55.300 = -11.974
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-11.974) = 12.973
  4. Absolute miss = |12.973| = 12.973

The poll overstated the Democrat by 13.0 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25457, race ID 1679 (538 database).