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2002 House · NJ-5

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 2002-10-16 (20 days before the election) · 400 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 33% · Republican 48%

R+15.0

The certified result

Democrat 38.28% · Republican 59.48%

R+21.2

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 33 − 48 = -15.00
  2. Actual margin = 38.281 − 59.485 = -21.204
  3. Signed miss = -15.00 − (-21.204) = 6.204
  4. Absolute miss = |6.204| = 6.204

The poll overstated the Democrat by 6.2 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 74313, race ID 2965 (538 database).