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2002 Senate · SD

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2002-10-26 (10 days before the election) · 805 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 45%

D+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.62% · Republican 49.47%

D+0.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 45 = 2.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.624 − 49.466 = 0.158
  3. Signed miss = 2.00 − (0.158) = 1.842
  4. Absolute miss = |1.842| = 1.842

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25536, race ID 1677 (538 database).