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2012 Senate · WI

Clout Research · fieldwork ended 2012-10-30 (7 days before the election) · 1,074 respondents · IVR · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 47%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.41% · Republican 45.86%

D+5.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 47 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.409 − 45.860 = 5.549
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (5.549) = -7.549
  4. Absolute miss = |-7.549| = 7.549

The poll overstated the Republican by 7.5 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30556, race ID 1504 (538 database).