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2004 House · SD-1

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2004-10-20 (13 days before the election) · 800 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 44%

D+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 53.36% · Republican 45.91%

D+7.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 44 = 4.00
  2. Actual margin = 53.364 − 45.915 = 7.449
  3. Signed miss = 4.00 − (7.449) = -3.450
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.450| = 3.450

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4581, race ID 3512 (538 database).