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2012 Senate · OH

Clout Research · fieldwork ended 2012-10-30 (7 days before the election) · 1,281 respondents · IVR · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 50%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.70% · Republican 44.70%

D+6.0

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 50 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.701 − 44.700 = 6.001
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (6.001) = -11.001
  4. Absolute miss = |-11.001| = 11.001

The poll overstated the Republican by 11.0 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30557, race ID 1494 (538 database).