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2002 Senate · GA

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

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 41%

D+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 45.90% · Republican 52.73%

R+6.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 41 = 6.00
  2. Actual margin = 45.896 − 52.734 = -6.838
  3. Signed miss = 6.00 − (-6.838) = 12.838
  4. Absolute miss = |12.838| = 12.838

The poll overstated the Democrat by 12.8 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25519, race ID 1653 (538 database).