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2014 Senate · IA

Øptimus Analytics · fieldwork ended 2014-10-23 (12 days before the election) · 2,755 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 44.1% · Republican 47.2%

R+3.1

The certified result

Democrat 43.76% · Republican 52.10%

R+8.3

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44.1 − 47.2 = -3.10
  2. Actual margin = 43.761 − 52.100 = -8.339
  3. Signed miss = -3.10 − (-8.339) = 5.239
  4. Absolute miss = |5.239| = 5.239

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 58867, race ID 26 (538 database).