Skip to content

2012 Senate · MN

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2012-11-02 (4 days before the election) · 556 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 60% · Republican 30%

D+30.0

The certified result

Democrat 65.23% · Republican 30.53%

D+34.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 60 − 30 = 30.00
  2. Actual margin = 65.229 − 30.528 = 34.701
  3. Signed miss = 30.00 − (34.701) = -4.701
  4. Absolute miss = |-4.701| = 4.701

The poll overstated the Republican by 4.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30735, race ID 1484 (538 database).