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2012 Senate · MA

University of New Hampshire Survey Center · fieldwork ended 2012-10-26 (11 days before the election) · 583 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 47%

even

The certified result

Democrat 53.27% · Republican 45.79%

D+7.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 47 = 0.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.274 − 45.790 = 7.484
  3. Signed miss = 0.00 − (7.484) = -7.484
  4. Absolute miss = |-7.484| = 7.484

The poll overstated the Republican by 7.5 points and showed a tie.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30413, race ID 1482 (538 database).