Skip to content

2004 House · MT-1

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2004-10-19 (14 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 28% · Republican 63%

R+35.0

The certified result

Democrat 32.78% · Republican 64.40%

R+31.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 28 − 63 = -35.00
  2. Actual margin = 32.777 − 64.398 = -31.621
  3. Signed miss = -35.00 − (-31.621) = -3.379
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.379| = 3.379

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4596, race ID 3389 (538 database).