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1998 Senate · NY

Zogby Analytics · fieldwork ended 1998-10-22 (12 days before the election) · 700 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 42%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.82% · Republican 33.67%

D+14.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 42 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.823 − 33.672 = 14.151
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (14.151) = -16.151
  4. Absolute miss = |-16.151| = 16.151

The poll overstated the Republican by 16.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 26282, race ID 1738 (538 database).