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2002 Senate · MI

Mitchell Research & Communications · fieldwork ended 2002-10-29 (7 days before the election) · 600 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 60% · Republican 30%

D+30.0

The certified result

Democrat 60.61% · Republican 37.88%

D+22.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 60 − 30 = 30.00
  2. Actual margin = 60.609 − 37.885 = 22.724
  3. Signed miss = 30.00 − (22.724) = 7.277
  4. Absolute miss = |7.277| = 7.277

The poll overstated the Democrat by 7.3 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25552, race ID 1663 (538 database).