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2012 President · MT

Mellman Group · fieldwork ended 2012-10-30 (7 days before the election) · 800 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (DEM)

The poll said

Democrat 41% · Republican 49%

R+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 41.70% · Republican 55.35%

R+13.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 41 − 49 = -8.00
  2. Actual margin = 41.698 − 55.352 = -13.654
  3. Signed miss = -8.00 − (-13.654) = 5.653
  4. Absolute miss = |5.653| = 5.653

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.7 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 73522, race ID 679 (538 database).