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2004 President · IA

Zogby Analytics · fieldwork ended 2004-10-31 (2 days before the election) · 601 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 45%

D+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 49.23% · Republican 49.90%

R+0.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 45 = 5.00
  2. Actual margin = 49.233 − 49.901 = -0.668
  3. Signed miss = 5.00 − (-0.668) = 5.668
  4. Absolute miss = |5.668| = 5.668

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4308, race ID 767 (538 database).