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2018 House · WI-1

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2018-10-20 (17 days before the election) · 551 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 44%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.27% · Republican 54.56%

R+12.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 44 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.269 − 54.560 = -12.291
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (-12.291) = 13.291
  4. Absolute miss = |13.291| = 13.291

The poll overstated the Democrat by 13.3 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 56383, race ID 590 (538 database).