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1998 Senate · PA

Harris Insights & Analytics · fieldwork ended 1998-10-30 (4 days before the election) · 1,812 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 32% · Republican 63%

R+31.0

The certified result

Democrat 34.79% · Republican 61.34%

R+26.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 32 − 63 = -31.00
  2. Actual margin = 34.787 − 61.342 = -26.555
  3. Signed miss = -31.00 − (-26.555) = -4.446
  4. Absolute miss = |-4.446| = 4.446

The poll overstated the Republican by 4.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 54409, race ID 1744 (538 database).