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2002 Senate · IL

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2002-10-22 (14 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 56% · Republican 32%

D+24.0

The certified result

Democrat 60.33% · Republican 38.02%

D+22.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 56 − 32 = 24.00
  2. Actual margin = 60.334 − 38.020 = 22.314
  3. Signed miss = 24.00 − (22.314) = 1.686
  4. Absolute miss = |1.686| = 1.686

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25521, race ID 1655 (538 database).