Skip to content

2010 Governor · MA

Western New England University Polling Institute · fieldwork ended 2010-10-18 (15 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 36%

D+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.42% · Republican 42.01%

D+6.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 36 = 8.00
  2. Actual margin = 48.422 − 42.005 = 6.417
  3. Signed miss = 8.00 − (6.417) = 1.582
  4. Absolute miss = |1.582| = 1.582

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 53026, race ID 1294 (538 database).