Skip to content

2012 President · FL

Ipsos · fieldwork ended 2012-11-04 (2 days before the election) · 769 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 48%

R+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.01% · Republican 49.13%

D+0.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 48 = -1.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.008 − 49.131 = 0.877
  3. Signed miss = -1.00 − (0.877) = -1.877
  4. Absolute miss = |-1.877| = 1.877

The poll overstated the Republican by 1.9 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30785, race ID 662 (538 database).