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1998 House · MT-1

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 1998-10-20 (14 days before the election) · 819 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 37% · Republican 52%

R+15.0

The certified result

Democrat 44.36% · Republican 53.01%

R+8.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 37 − 52 = -15.00
  2. Actual margin = 44.359 − 53.008 = -8.649
  3. Signed miss = -15.00 − (-8.649) = -6.351
  4. Absolute miss = |-6.351| = 6.351

The poll overstated the Republican by 6.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64121, race ID 2078 (538 database).