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2010 Senate · MO

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2010-10-19 (14 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 49%

R+9.0

The certified result

Democrat 40.63% · Republican 54.23%

R+13.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 49 = -9.00
  2. Actual margin = 40.626 − 54.229 = -13.603
  3. Signed miss = -9.00 − (-13.603) = 4.603
  4. Absolute miss = |4.603| = 4.603

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 32637, race ID 1527 (538 database).