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2012 Governor · WA

Elway Research · fieldwork ended 2012-10-20 (17 days before the election) · 451 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 47%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.54% · Republican 48.46%

D+3.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 47 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.539 − 48.461 = 3.078
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (3.078) = -5.079
  4. Absolute miss = |-5.079| = 5.079

The poll overstated the Republican by 5.1 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 54006, race ID 1267 (538 database).