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2002 Governor · GA

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2002-10-16 (20 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 39%

D+9.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.26% · Republican 51.42%

R+5.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 39 = 9.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.255 − 51.419 = -5.164
  3. Signed miss = 9.00 − (-5.164) = 14.164
  4. Absolute miss = |14.164| = 14.164

The poll overstated the Democrat by 14.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25519, race ID 1389 (538 database).