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2012 President · MN

Public Opinion Strategies · fieldwork ended 2012-10-30 (7 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone · partisan sponsor (REP)

The poll said

Democrat 45% · Republican 46%

R+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 52.65% · Republican 44.96%

D+7.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 45 − 46 = -1.00
  2. Actual margin = 52.652 − 44.958 = 7.694
  3. Signed miss = -1.00 − (7.694) = -8.694
  4. Absolute miss = |-8.694| = 8.694

The poll overstated the Republican by 8.7 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 77925, race ID 676 (538 database).