Skip to content

1998 Governor · MD

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 1998-10-16 (18 days before the election) · 828 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 44%

D+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 55.14% · Republican 44.82%

D+10.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 44 = 2.00
  2. Actual margin = 55.142 − 44.816 = 10.326
  3. Signed miss = 2.00 − (10.326) = -8.327
  4. Absolute miss = |-8.327| = 8.327

The poll overstated the Republican by 8.3 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 26147, race ID 1447 (538 database).