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2000 Senate · VA

ABC News/The Washington Post · fieldwork ended 2000-10-24 (14 days before the election) · 1,009 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 48%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.68% · Republican 52.26%

R+4.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 48 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.680 − 52.255 = -4.575
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (-4.575) = 2.575
  4. Absolute miss = |2.575| = 2.575

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 25901, race ID 1712 (538 database).