Skip to content

2012 Senate · OH

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2012-10-21 (16 days before the election) · 609 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 43% · Republican 42%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.70% · Republican 44.70%

D+6.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 43 − 42 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.701 − 44.700 = 6.001
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (6.001) = -5.001
  4. Absolute miss = |-5.001| = 5.001

The poll overstated the Republican by 5.0 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30250, race ID 1494 (538 database).