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2010 Governor · MD

ABC News/The Washington Post · fieldwork ended 2010-10-21 (12 days before the election) · 1,434 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 54% · Republican 40%

D+14.0

The certified result

Democrat 56.24% · Republican 41.78%

D+14.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 54 − 40 = 14.00
  2. Actual margin = 56.245 − 41.785 = 14.460
  3. Signed miss = 14.00 − (14.460) = -0.460
  4. Absolute miss = |-0.460| = 0.460

The poll overstated the Republican by 0.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 32692, race ID 1293 (538 database).