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2002 Governor · VT

Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy · fieldwork ended 2002-10-24 (12 days before the election) · 625 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 35%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 42.39% · Republican 44.94%

R+2.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 35 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 42.390 − 44.941 = -2.551
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (-2.551) = 9.551
  4. Absolute miss = |9.551| = 9.551

The poll overstated the Democrat by 9.6 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 73852, race ID 1414 (538 database).