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1998 Senate · WI

Market Shares Corp. · fieldwork ended 1998-10-23 (11 days before the election) · 600 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 43% · Republican 46%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.55% · Republican 48.40%

D+2.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 43 − 46 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.548 − 48.402 = 2.146
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (2.146) = -5.146
  4. Absolute miss = |-5.146| = 5.146

The poll overstated the Republican by 5.1 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 26088, race ID 1750 (538 database).