Skip to content

2004 Senate · CA

Field Research Corp. (Field Poll) · fieldwork ended 2004-10-24 (9 days before the election) · 1,086 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 53% · Republican 34%

D+19.0

The certified result

Democrat 57.71% · Republican 37.80%

D+19.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 53 − 34 = 19.00
  2. Actual margin = 57.708 − 37.798 = 19.910
  3. Signed miss = 19.00 − (19.910) = -0.910
  4. Absolute miss = |-0.910| = 0.910

The poll overstated the Republican by 0.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4556, race ID 1618 (538 database).