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2012 Senate · MD

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2012-11-02 (4 days before the election) · 705 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 57% · Republican 34%

D+23.0

The certified result

Democrat 55.98% · Republican 26.33%

D+29.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 57 − 34 = 23.00
  2. Actual margin = 55.978 − 26.328 = 29.650
  3. Signed miss = 23.00 − (29.650) = -6.649
  4. Absolute miss = |-6.649| = 6.649

The poll overstated the Republican by 6.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30699, race ID 1481 (538 database).