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2010 House · GA-8

Mellman Group · fieldwork ended 2010-10-18 (15 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 44%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.30% · Republican 52.70%

R+5.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 44 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.303 − 52.697 = -5.394
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (-5.394) = 8.394
  4. Absolute miss = |8.394| = 8.394

The poll overstated the Democrat by 8.4 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 51740, race ID 4579 (538 database).