Skip to content

2018 Senate · MA

Western New England University Polling Institute · fieldwork ended 2018-10-18 (19 days before the election) · 402 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 57% · Republican 27%

D+30.0

The certified result

Democrat 60.34% · Republican 36.17%

D+24.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 57 − 27 = 30.00
  2. Actual margin = 60.337 − 36.172 = 24.165
  3. Signed miss = 30.00 − (24.165) = 5.835
  4. Absolute miss = |5.835| = 5.835

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 56585, race ID 105 (538 database).