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2002 Senate · TN

SurveyUSA · fieldwork ended 2002-10-20 (16 days before the election) · 726 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 49%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.34% · Republican 54.28%

R+9.9

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 49 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.339 − 54.279 = -9.940
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-9.940) = 5.941
  4. Absolute miss = |5.941| = 5.941

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 54948, race ID 1678 (538 database).