Skip to content

2012 President · IA

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2012-10-29 (8 days before the election) · 676 respondents · IVR · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 45%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.99% · Republican 46.18%

D+5.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 45 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.988 − 46.178 = 5.810
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (5.810) = -0.810
  4. Absolute miss = |-0.810| = 0.810

The poll overstated the Republican by 0.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30494, race ID 665 (538 database).