Skip to content

2013 Senate · MA

Harper Polling · fieldwork ended 2013-06-11 (14 days before the election) · 498 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 49% · Republican 37%

D+12.0

The certified result

Democrat 54.80% · Republican 44.60%

D+10.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 49 − 37 = 12.00
  2. Actual margin = 54.800 − 44.601 = 10.199
  3. Signed miss = 12.00 − (10.199) = 1.801
  4. Absolute miss = |1.801| = 1.801

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.8 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 63633, race ID 1472 (538 database).