Skip to content

2008 Senate · RI

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 365 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 64% · Republican 25%

D+39.0

The certified result

Democrat 73.07% · Republican 26.48%

D+46.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 64 − 25 = 39.00
  2. Actual margin = 73.071 − 26.475 = 46.596
  3. Signed miss = 39.00 − (46.596) = -7.596
  4. Absolute miss = |-7.596| = 7.596

The poll overstated the Republican by 7.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16471, race ID 1572 (538 database).