Skip to content

2004 Senate · AR

Opinion Research Associates · fieldwork ended 2004-10-19 (14 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 66% · Republican 30%

D+36.0

The certified result

Democrat 55.90% · Republican 44.07%

D+11.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 66 − 30 = 36.00
  2. Actual margin = 55.898 − 44.070 = 11.828
  3. Signed miss = 36.00 − (11.828) = 24.172
  4. Absolute miss = |24.172| = 24.172

The poll overstated the Democrat by 24.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4608, race ID 1617 (538 database).