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2005 Governor · VA

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2005-10-19 (20 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 44%

R+2.0

The certified result

Democrat 51.72% · Republican 45.99%

D+5.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 44 = -2.00
  2. Actual margin = 51.717 − 45.989 = 5.728
  3. Signed miss = -2.00 − (5.728) = -7.727
  4. Absolute miss = |-7.727| = 7.727

The poll overstated the Republican by 7.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 63950, race ID 1364 (538 database).