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2004 President · OH

ABC News/The Washington Post · fieldwork ended 2004-10-16 (17 days before the election) · 789 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 47%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.71% · Republican 50.81%

R+2.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 47 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 48.707 − 50.814 = -2.107
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (-2.107) = 5.107
  4. Absolute miss = |5.107| = 5.107

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.1 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 4688, race ID 790 (538 database).