Skip to content

2002 Senate · SC

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2002-10-26 (10 days before the election) · 764 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 48% · Republican 49%

R+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.19% · Republican 54.40%

R+10.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 48 − 49 = -1.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.188 − 54.402 = -10.214
  3. Signed miss = -1.00 − (-10.214) = 9.214
  4. Absolute miss = |9.214| = 9.214

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 54931, race ID 1676 (538 database).