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2018 Senate · FL

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2018-10-25 (12 days before the election) · 737 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47.89% · Republican 44.36%

D+3.5

The certified result

Democrat 49.93% · Republican 50.05%

R+0.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47.89 − 44.36 = 3.53
  2. Actual margin = 49.932 − 50.055 = -0.123
  3. Signed miss = 3.53 − (-0.123) = 3.653
  4. Absolute miss = |3.653| = 3.653

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 56450, race ID 100 (538 database).