Skip to content

2008 President · CA

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 999 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 55% · Republican 40%

D+15.0

The certified result

Democrat 61.01% · Republican 36.95%

D+24.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 55 − 40 = 15.00
  2. Actual margin = 61.013 − 36.955 = 24.058
  3. Signed miss = 15.00 − (24.058) = -9.058
  4. Absolute miss = |-9.058| = 9.058

The poll overstated the Republican by 9.1 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16481, race ID 708 (538 database).