Skip to content

2014 Senate · GA

Landmark Communications · fieldwork ended 2014-10-20 (15 days before the election) · 1,000 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 47.4% · Republican 47.3%

D+0.1

The certified result

Democrat 45.21% · Republican 52.89%

R+7.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47.4 − 47.3 = 0.10
  2. Actual margin = 45.206 − 52.889 = -7.683
  3. Signed miss = 0.10 − (-7.683) = 7.783
  4. Absolute miss = |7.783| = 7.783

The poll overstated the Democrat by 7.8 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 33815, race ID 17 (538 database).