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2002 Senate · SC

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2002-10-15 (21 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 34% · Republican 51%

R+17.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.19% · Republican 54.40%

R+10.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 34 − 51 = -17.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.188 − 54.402 = -10.214
  3. Signed miss = -17.00 − (-10.214) = -6.786
  4. Absolute miss = |-6.786| = 6.786

The poll overstated the Republican by 6.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25534, race ID 1676 (538 database).