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2012 Senate · MA

MassINC Polling Group · fieldwork ended 2012-10-21 (16 days before the election) · 516 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 44%

D+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 53.27% · Republican 45.79%

D+7.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 44 = 6.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.274 − 45.790 = 7.484
  3. Signed miss = 6.00 − (7.484) = -1.484
  4. Absolute miss = |-1.484| = 1.484

The poll overstated the Republican by 1.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30256, race ID 1482 (538 database).