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2014 Senate · VA

Vox Populi Polling · fieldwork ended 2014-10-27 (8 days before the election) · 734 respondents · IVR/Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 40%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.15% · Republican 48.34%

D+0.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 40 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.150 − 48.338 = 0.812
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (0.812) = 3.188
  4. Absolute miss = |3.188| = 3.188

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 34507, race ID 16 (538 database).