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2012 President · ND

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2012-10-27 (10 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 54%

R+14.0

The certified result

Democrat 38.70% · Republican 58.32%

R+19.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 54 = -14.00
  2. Actual margin = 38.697 − 58.316 = -19.619
  3. Signed miss = -14.00 − (-19.619) = 5.618
  4. Absolute miss = |5.618| = 5.618

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30465, race ID 681 (538 database).