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2001 Governor · NJ

Fairleigh Dickinson University · fieldwork ended 2001-10-30 (7 days before the election) · 600 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 53% · Republican 35%

D+18.0

The certified result

Democrat 56.43% · Republican 41.67%

D+14.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 53 − 35 = 18.00
  2. Actual margin = 56.433 − 41.675 = 14.758
  3. Signed miss = 18.00 − (14.758) = 3.242
  4. Absolute miss = |3.242| = 3.242

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 63926, race ID 1417 (538 database).