Skip to content

2010 Senate · IL

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2010-10-18 (15 days before the election) · 750 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 44%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.42% · Republican 48.02%

R+1.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 44 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.416 − 48.015 = -1.599
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-1.599) = -2.401
  4. Absolute miss = |-2.401| = 2.401

The poll overstated the Republican by 2.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 32602, race ID 1518 (538 database).