Skip to content

1998 House · IN-9

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 1998-10-21 (13 days before the election) · 300 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 41% · Republican 51%

R+10.0

The certified result

Democrat 50.76% · Republican 47.93%

D+2.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 41 − 51 = -10.00
  2. Actual margin = 50.756 − 47.930 = 2.826
  3. Signed miss = -10.00 − (2.826) = -12.826
  4. Absolute miss = |-12.826| = 12.826

The poll overstated the Republican by 12.8 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64170, race ID 1996 (538 database).