Skip to content

1998 Senate · NY

Harris Insights & Analytics · fieldwork ended 1998-10-20 (14 days before the election) · 1,792 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 46%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.82% · Republican 33.67%

D+14.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 46 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.823 − 33.672 = 14.151
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (14.151) = -16.151
  4. Absolute miss = |-16.151| = 16.151

The poll overstated the Republican by 16.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 54375, race ID 1738 (538 database).