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2014 Governor · MA

GQR · fieldwork ended 2014-10-21 (14 days before the election) · 611 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 44%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.54% · Republican 48.40%

R+1.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 44 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.536 − 48.397 = -1.861
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-1.861) = 2.861
  4. Absolute miss = |2.861| = 2.861

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.9 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 34289, race ID 1251 (538 database).