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2012 President · MT

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2012-11-02 (4 days before the election) · 836 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 52%

R+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 41.70% · Republican 55.35%

R+13.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 52 = -7.00
  2. Actual margin = 41.698 − 55.352 = -13.654
  3. Signed miss = -7.00 − (-13.654) = 6.653
  4. Absolute miss = |6.653| = 6.653

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30681, race ID 679 (538 database).