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2018 Senate · PA

Change Research · fieldwork ended 2018-11-03 (3 days before the election) · 1,833 respondents · Text-to-Web/Online Ad

The poll said

Democrat 51% · Republican 44%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 55.74% · Republican 42.62%

D+13.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 51 − 44 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 55.744 − 42.617 = 13.127
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (13.127) = -6.127
  4. Absolute miss = |-6.127| = 6.127

The poll overstated the Republican by 6.1 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 56758, race ID 118 (538 database).