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2004 President · IL

Market Shares Corp. · fieldwork ended 2004-10-18 (15 days before the election) · 700 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 42%

D+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 54.82% · Republican 44.48%

D+10.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 42 = 8.00
  2. Actual margin = 54.823 − 44.479 = 10.344
  3. Signed miss = 8.00 − (10.344) = -2.345
  4. Absolute miss = |-2.345| = 2.345

The poll overstated the Republican by 2.3 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4638, race ID 769 (538 database).