Skip to content

2012 Senate · MI

Mitchell Research & Communications · fieldwork ended 2012-11-04 (2 days before the election) · 1,305 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 55% · Republican 41%

D+14.0

The certified result

Democrat 58.80% · Republican 37.98%

D+20.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 55 − 41 = 14.00
  2. Actual margin = 58.798 − 37.984 = 20.814
  3. Signed miss = 14.00 − (20.814) = -6.814
  4. Absolute miss = |-6.814| = 6.814

The poll overstated the Republican by 6.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 30795, race ID 1483 (538 database).