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2012 Senate · NV

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2012-10-23 (14 days before the election) · 500 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 50%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.71% · Republican 45.87%

R+1.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 50 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.706 − 45.866 = -1.160
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-1.160) = -3.840
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.840| = 3.840

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30266, race ID 1489 (538 database).