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2002 Senate · CO

Zogby Analytics · fieldwork ended 2002-11-03 (2 days before the election) · 507 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 49% · Republican 44%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 45.77% · Republican 50.70%

R+4.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 49 − 44 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 45.769 − 50.696 = -4.927
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (-4.927) = 9.926
  4. Absolute miss = |9.926| = 9.926

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.9 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25665, race ID 1651 (538 database).