Skip to content

2010 House · TN-4

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 2010-10-13 (20 days before the election) · 300 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 40% · Republican 45%

R+5.0

The certified result

Democrat 38.56% · Republican 57.07%

R+18.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 40 − 45 = -5.00
  2. Actual margin = 38.561 − 57.066 = -18.505
  3. Signed miss = -5.00 − (-18.505) = 13.505
  4. Absolute miss = |13.505| = 13.505

The poll overstated the Democrat by 13.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 52100, race ID 4822 (538 database).