2006 House · VA-2
RT Strategies · fieldwork ended 2006-10-25 (13 days before the election) · 989 respondents · Live Phone
The poll said
Democrat 50% · Republican 45%
D+5.0
The certified result
Democrat 48.45% · Republican 51.27%
R+2.8
The arithmetic
- Poll margin = 50 − 45 = 5.00
- Actual margin = 48.453 − 51.269 = -2.816
- Signed miss = 5.00 − (-2.816) = 7.816
- Absolute miss = |7.816| = 7.816
The poll overstated the Democrat by 7.8 points and had the wrong leader.
Where these numbers come from
Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 64245, race ID 3995 (538 database).