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2005 Governor · VA

ABC News/The Washington Post · fieldwork ended 2005-10-25 (14 days before the election) · 1,004 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 47% · Republican 44%

D+3.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.72% · Republican 45.99%

D+5.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 47 − 44 = 3.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.717 − 45.989 = 5.728
  3. Signed miss = 3.00 − (5.728) = -2.727
  4. Absolute miss = |-2.727| = 2.727

The poll overstated the Republican by 2.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 63910, race ID 1364 (538 database).