Skip to content

2010 House · VA-5

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 2010-10-30 (3 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 45%

R+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 46.99% · Republican 50.81%

R+3.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 45 = -3.00
  2. Actual margin = 46.988 − 50.812 = -3.824
  3. Signed miss = -3.00 − (-3.824) = 0.824
  4. Absolute miss = |0.824| = 0.824

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 52126, race ID 4868 (538 database).