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2010 Senate · DE

Fairleigh Dickinson University · fieldwork ended 2010-10-23 (10 days before the election) · 797 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 57% · Republican 36%

D+21.0

The certified result

Democrat 56.61% · Republican 40.03%

D+16.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 57 − 36 = 21.00
  2. Actual margin = 56.607 − 40.030 = 16.577
  3. Signed miss = 21.00 − (16.577) = 4.423
  4. Absolute miss = |4.423| = 4.423

The poll overstated the Democrat by 4.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 32711, race ID 1513 (538 database).