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2013 House · SC-1

Public Policy Polling · fieldwork ended 2013-04-20 (17 days before the election) · 796 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 50% · Republican 41%

D+9.0

The certified result

Democrat 41.87% · Republican 54.03%

R+12.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 50 − 41 = 9.00
  2. Actual margin = 41.874 − 54.026 = -12.152
  3. Signed miss = 9.00 − (-12.152) = 21.152
  4. Absolute miss = |21.152| = 21.152

The poll overstated the Democrat by 21.2 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64191, race ID 1782 (538 database).