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2010 Senate · 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 64% · Republican 27%

D+37.0

The certified result

Democrat 62.19% · Republican 35.75%

D+26.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 64 − 27 = 37.00
  2. Actual margin = 62.193 − 35.753 = 26.440
  3. Signed miss = 37.00 − (26.440) = 10.560
  4. Absolute miss = |10.560| = 10.560

The poll overstated the Democrat by 10.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 32692, race ID 1525 (538 database).