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2012 House · RI-1

OnMessage Inc. · fieldwork ended 2012-10-24 (13 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 39% · Republican 45%

R+6.0

The certified result

Democrat 52.95% · Republican 40.82%

D+12.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 39 − 45 = -6.00
  2. Actual margin = 52.952 − 40.824 = 12.128
  3. Signed miss = -6.00 − (12.128) = -18.127
  4. Absolute miss = |-18.127| = 18.127

The poll overstated the Republican by 18.1 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 51353, race ID 5239 (538 database).