Skip to content

2008 Senate · OR

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2008-10-25 (10 days before the election) · 698 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 44% · Republican 43%

D+1.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.91% · Republican 45.55%

D+3.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 44 − 43 = 1.00
  2. Actual margin = 48.905 − 45.553 = 3.352
  3. Signed miss = 1.00 − (3.352) = -2.351
  4. Absolute miss = |-2.351| = 2.351

The poll overstated the Republican by 2.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 16492, race ID 1571 (538 database).