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2014 House · MA-6

Øptimus Analytics · fieldwork ended 2014-10-24 (11 days before the election) · 1,807 respondents · IVR · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 40.5% · Republican 42.3%

R+1.8

The certified result

Democrat 54.97% · Republican 41.14%

D+13.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40.5 − 42.3 = -1.80
  2. Actual margin = 54.970 − 41.139 = 13.831
  3. Signed miss = -1.80 − (13.831) = -15.630
  4. Absolute miss = |-15.630| = 15.630

The poll overstated the Republican by 15.6 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 36082, race ID 5528 (538 database).