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2008 Senate · TN

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 653 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 30% · Republican 53%

R+23.0

The certified result

Democrat 31.64% · Republican 65.14%

R+33.5

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 30 − 53 = -23.00
  2. Actual margin = 31.644 − 65.144 = -33.500
  3. Signed miss = -23.00 − (-33.500) = 10.500
  4. Absolute miss = |10.500| = 10.500

The poll overstated the Democrat by 10.5 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16478, race ID 1575 (538 database).