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2010 Senate · MO

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2010-10-17 (16 days before the election) · 646 respondents · IVR · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 41% · Republican 46%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 40.63% · Republican 54.23%

R+13.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 41 − 46 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 40.626 − 54.229 = -13.603
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-13.603) = 8.603
  4. Absolute miss = |8.603| = 8.603

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 32576, race ID 1527 (538 database).